The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition, Volume 2: The Modern World (1650-Present) [Compact ed.] 0312441541, 9780312441548

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COMPACT-EDITION The Bedford Anthology of —

‘World Literature The Modern World, 1650-The Present

Paul Davis -Gary Harrison David M. Johnson- John F-Crawford

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Paul Davis * Gary Harrison » David M. Johnson + John F. Crawford Welcome to the book companion site for The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition, Volumes 1 and 2, by Paul Davis, Gary Harrison, David M. Johnson, and John F. Crawford. To use this site you will need to register as a student or instructor. Registration is free and takes only a few moments. If you are considering the

text, please visit our Instructor preview page. —

You can also visit World Literature Online, the Web site for The Bedford Anthology of World Literature.

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The free companion site for The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition, offers you more help for exploring an entire world of literature. ¢ Culture and Context discussions provide historical and cultural background for the authors and works in the anthology as well as annotated links to related Web sites for further research.

¢ World Literature in the 21st Century explores the enduring influence of selected works of literature through short essays connecting those works to recent films, literary responses, or trends in popular culture. ¢ LitQuizzes test your understanding of selected readings in the anthology. ¢ LitLinks offer insight into authors’ lives and works by providing addi_tional biographical information and annotated links to related Web sites.

The Bedford Anthology of

World Literature The Modern World, 1650-The Present

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2021 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

httos://archive.org/details/bedfordanthologyOO02unse_m0o1

Compact Edition

The Bedford Anthology of

World Literature The Modern World, 1650-The Present

EDITED BY

Paul Davis

Gary Harrison David M. Johnson John F. Crawford THE

UNIVERSITY

OF NEW

BEDFORD / ST. MARTIN’S Boston

# New York

MEXICO

For Bedford/St. Martin's Developmental Editor: Caroline Thompson Production Editor: Karen Stocz Senior Production Supervisor: Nancy Myers Marketing Manager: Adrienne Petsick Editorial Assistant: Marisa Feinstein Text Design: Anna Palchik and Jean Hammond Cover Design: Donna Lee Dennison Cover Art: Archibald J. Motley Jr., Blues, 1929, Chicago History Museum Composition: TexTech International Printing and Binding: Quebecor World Taunton President: Joan E. Feinberg

Editorial Director: Denise B. Wydra Editor in Chief: Karen S. Henry Director of Marketing: Karen R. Soeltz Director of Editing, Design, and Production: Marcia Cohen Assistant Director of Editing, Design, and Production: Elise S. Kaiser Managing Editor: Elizabeth M. Schaaf Library of Congress Control Number: 2008925872 Copyright © 2009 by Bedford/St. Martin’s All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes or in writing by the Publisher. Manufactured in the United States of America. a

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For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116 (617-399-4000)

ISBN-10: 0-312—44154-1 ISBN-13: 978—0—312—44154—8

Acknowledgments Abé Kobo, “The Red Cocoon,” translated by Lane Dunlop from Late Chrysanthemum: 21 Stories from the Japanese (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1986). Copyright © 1986 by Lane Dunlop. Reprinted with the permission of the translator. Acknowledgments and copyrights are continued at the back of the book on pages 1819-22, which constitute an extension of the copyright page. It is a violation of the law to reproduce these selections by any means whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder.

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CW Our thinking about teaching world literature goes back to 1985, when we received a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to develop and team teach a new kind of course— one that integrated the rich literary traditions of Asia, India, the Arabic world, the Americas, and Europe. As year-long courses in world literature became more widely taught in the United States, and as the number

and range of texts taught in these courses greatly increased, we developed The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, a six-volume collection designed to meet the — the world literature course. challenges of taking —and teaching Now we have streamlined The Bedford Anthology of World Literature to address the need for a two-volume edition that can be used in both one- and two-semester courses. Basing our choices on reviews, expert advice, and our ongoing classroom experience, we provide a substantial and carefully balanced selection of Western and non-Western texts chronologically arranged in a compact, teachable format. We give special emphasis to the works most commonly taught in the survey course. By linking them to clusters of texts that represent themes that recur and resonate across cultures, we provide options for drawing connections among works and across traditions. A distinctive variety of pedagogical features gives students the help they need to understand individual works of literature, while extensive historical and background materials help them place the works in context. Throughout, a uniquely extensive illustration program brings the pedagogy into focus, and the literature and contextual materials to life. AN ENTIRE WORLD

OF LITERATURE

The Compact Edition offers twenty-seven complete longer works with additional fiction, drama, poetry, letters, and essays in the best available editions and transla-

tions. Complete works include Homer’s The Odyssey, Sophocles’ Antigone, Beowulf, Dante’s The Inferno, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest in Volume One; Moliére’s Tartuffe, Voltaire’s Candide, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis,

and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in Volume Two. Even as we have reduced the number of texts for the two-volume format, we have nonetheless added some new works in order to respond to the ongoing revaluation and expansion of the canon as well as to

vi

PREFACE

better meet the pedagogical ends of world literature courses as they are being taught today. Among the additions to Volume One are new poems from Sappho and new excerpts from The Aeneid, Plato’s Republic, Boethius’s The Consolation ofPhilosophy, and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. In Volume Two we have added works including Immanuel Kant’s “What is Enlightenment,” selections from Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and new poems by Friedrich Holderlin, Alphonse Lamartine, and Rosalia de Castro; also, Guy du Maupassant’s “Regret,” Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Jawaharlal Nehru’s “Speech on the Granting of Indian Independence,” and excerpts from André Breton’s The Surrealist Manifesto.

In addition to a broad selection of literature, we provide a variety of help for understanding the readings. Our thorough, informative, and readable introductions and headnotes provide biographical and literary background for each author and text. Generous footnotes, marginal notes, critical quotations, and cross-references

help students navigate this wealth of information. Phonetic pronunciation guides help with unfamiliar author, character, and place names. For help with literary and historical vocabulary, key terms throughout the text refer students to a comprehensive glossary at the end of each volume. Further Research bibliographies following headnotes and introductions list sources for students who want to read more critical, biographical, or historical information about an author or work.

Each volume is divided into two parts to avoid organizing literary history within a European period frame.

. ‘Mesopotamian cities were a

aj Mesopotamian city. (University of Pennsylvania Museum [Negative #58-6807])

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Preface

CHRONOLOGICAL

STRUCTURE

AND TEACHABLE

ORGANIZATION

When we take into account the literary histories of Japan, China, India, the Arabic and Muslim world, Africa, and the Americas, a structure based upon traditional European periods, such as medieval and Renaissance, Enlightenment and Romanticism, becomes highly problematic. The literatures within the world’s traditions developed within their own unique historical and cultural trajectories, and it is not really until the twentieth century—and even then not without caution—that we can speak of a modernism or postmodernism that reaches across the world’s many borders. In light of these issues, we have arranged our texts chronologically throughout both volumes, while providing historical and cultural contexts in our general introductions and headnotes. We use a four-period model, dividing each volume into two parts, as follows. The first part of Volume One focuses upon the ancient world, from the beginnings of literature to about 100 c.z., the second upon the medieval and Early Modern World through about 1650. Two general introductions, one for each part, provide e--: historical and cultural contexts for the various literatures and traditions represented in the volume. We chose to end Volume One with the mid seventeenth-century because it marks that crucial moment when the histories of various regions and

Comparative timelines in each general introduction list what happened, where, and when in three overarching categories: history and politics; literature; and science, culture, and technology.

Binvw Doctor Faust’s order to dispossess an aging rustic couple from their picturesque cottage in a linden grove, the devil Mephistopheles and his crew set fire to the place. In the ensuing inferno the innocent pair, Philemon and Baucis, their cottage, and their chapel—all signs of a vanishing agricultural world—are lost. A warden who has witnessed the fire from his tower encapsulates what it all means: “What once was a joy to see / After centuries is gone.” In this scene from Faust, Part 2, the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe characterizes the onset of modernity in Europe as the catastrophic collapse of an agrarian world cemented by feudal social ties and religious bonds.

these changes—and which are still at work today —extended their transformative reach to other areas of the world, such as India, Africa, and the Americas, and led to new ways of thinking and feeling, new forms of art and literature, and new means of producing and disseminating printed materials, including literary works. The eighteenth century is the last century of what historians call the Early Modern Period, extending from about 1500 to 1800, although sometimes extended

While that simple world was always something of an ideal, it is undeniable that

not conveniently observe the temporal markers of the Roman calendar. Writers

accelerating socio-economic changes sweeping Europe in the period from 1650 to 1850 led to a transfer of power from a landed gentry to a commercial and manufacturing class whose center was the city, not the country. The forces of secularization, urbanization, and commercialization that promoted and accompanied

who exerted a profound influence upon the Enlightenment, for example, such as

fifty years in either direction. While historians of Europe usually emphasize a break between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we must acknowledge that intel-

lectual, cultural, and political transformations in Europe, much less the world, do

René Descartes (1596-1650), Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliére (1622-1673), John Locke (1632-1704), and Isaac Newton (1642-1727), published their major works closer to 1650, Moreover, in Europe, the eighteenth century —typically described

COMPARATIVE TIMELINE FOR 1650-1850

168S_ Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes; absolute monarchyinFrance. angel opens Chinese ports to foreigners.

TG41_ Durch begintradewithJapan, 1652. Dutch colonists found CapeTown in South Africa. 1657 GreatFiredestroys Edo,Japan,

1688 Glorious Revolution in England

(James Il deposed; William and Mary crowned)

1660 Royal Soclery founded in London, 1701-14 1666 Great Fire ofLondon

1669. Hinduism outlawed byMughals in India; many Hindu temples 1675-76

aah

Philip's Warbetween eerand the.

1668

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1691 SorJuana, Replyto SorFilotes

1690. Locke, TwoTreatises on Gowemment andEssay Concerning Human Understanding

1702 Basho, Narrow

1702 Firstdailynewspaper

WaroftheSpanish Succession

1703. Peter| founds St.Petersburgin Russia,

Road through the

published in London.

1704 Newton, Opticks 1706

Excavations of Por

1707 Death ofMughalemperor

1709. lenabu newshogun inJapan

and

Peclaneien esa

Aurangzeb accelerates decline of Mughal empire in India.

120

tin ofthe pian

PREFACE

empires became the history of the world. While considerable contact among civilizations took place in the ancient world and medieval period, the oceanic voyages of developing European nation states in the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries vastly expanded the networks of intercultural contact, commerce, and confrontation. We believe that Shakespeare’s The Tempest serves as the best hinge upon which to hang the change of volumes, because the play thematizes the shift to a global history, announcing the end of an era even as it inaugurates an inquiry into the vexing contradictions of the brave new world of increasing globalization that will resound through the works we find throughout the second volume. Volume Two similarly divides into two parts with their own general introductions, the first focusing upon the period from about 1650 to 1850, the second from 1850 to the present. Volume Two begins with Moliére’s Tartuffe, Pu Song-Ling’s “The Mural, and Basho’s Narrow Road through the Backcountry. These late seventeenth-

century works point in their distinctive ways and in their particular contexts to the early modernity of France, China, and Japan, and arise in periods of social, economic, and cultural transformation that will accelerate through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

TEXTS IN CONTEXT

Within the overall chronological framework of this anthology, we have grouped certain selections to give teachers a flexible means of helping students make connections with unfamiliar and diverse texts. Based on our research and the advice of our reviewers, we have chosen twenty of the most commonly taught texts as “Text in Context” works and used them to anchor “In the World” sections —literary clusters that vastly expand the sampling of texts and the possibilities for dialogue between various countries and their cultural traditions. Each “Text in Context” work is accompanied by additional illustrations or maps and is linked to an “In the World” section that groups various writings written around the world at about the same time on a related theme. Thus, ancient texts on

the theme of “Heroes and Adventure” are linked to Homer’s The Odyssey; medieval writings on “Courts and Codes of Rule” accompany Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji; and twentieth-century texts on themes of “War, Conflict, and Resistance” are

related to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. “In the World” clusters emphasize social and historical contexts, helping students understand that the people across historical, cultural, and national divides have sought in similar but distinct ways to imagine and praise their gods, to codify their laws, to commemorate and celebrate their heroes and heroines, to come to terms with their political and social revolutions, and to articulate and grasp the meaning and complexity of their private loves, lives, and losses. We have kept the “In the World” sections distinct from the “Text in Context” works to provide more flexibility for teachers— key texts can be taught with related clusters or by themselves. A second type of cluster that we call “In the Tradition” traces specific poetic traditions within and across cultures in order to highlight the development and

Preface

1X

Each Text in Context work is linked to an In the World section, a cluster of writings on a related theme that were written around the world near the time of the Text in Context work.

Hebrew Scriptures, c. 900-100 Reb.

The Hebrew Bible read as living literature is a tragic epic with a single long plot: the tale of the fall of a hero through his weak nesses, The hero is Israel, a people given a destiny almost too high for human beings, the charge of God's law. ...Unlike all other epic tragedies, it does not end in death. The hero has eternal life, and the prospect of ages of pain in which to rise at long last to the destiny which he cannot escape.

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alNF GON TBST

Hebrew Scriptures

Through a variety of literatures—myth, history, poetry, drama,

biography, philosophy, and prophecy — the Hebrew Scriptures record 4 people's struggle to understand the all-powerful, complex, and

78

Imace: Sacrifice of Isaac,

seemingly contradictory deity Yahweh and to live up to the terms of

Mosaic Pavement, early sixth century IMAGE: Moses Guiding the Hebrews map: Israel and Judah

79

a series of agreements or covenants with Him. On one hand Yahweh is

81

a god of violence and destruction, wiping out cities, flooding the world,

85

demanding death without mercy for his enemies. On the other, He is

TIME AND PLACE: The Ancient Hebrews: The Great

Temple

87

Myths of Creation

Ow

139

HEBREW SCRIPTURES NEAR EAST, C. 900-100 B.C.E. The National Epic.

The first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the

most important portion of the Scriptures to Orthodox Jews, are called

the Pentateuch or the Torah (the Law). The Torah was originally divided into books because in its entirety it was too long for a single roll of papyrus or parchment. The most important writer of this

section is identified as “J” for God’s name. This autho with the creation of the wo! Genesis 2:5. Using the folk story of how humans were against Yahweh, causing hit ‘on women in childbirth, anj He describes the founding

IN THE

WORLD Alpha Synagogue, Hefzibah,

series of patriarchs and chi

bondage under a heroic lea

Myths of Creation

code from their god on Mt.

tures tells of the near sacrifice of

Nn. Ordered by God to murder his son, i‘

the land of Canaan, which

the handofGod and rewarded for his

eileen ferusalerr)

Abraham. With its central t reconciliation, this story b of Israel and of the Jews, in

for the Greeks and the story, tales. Herman Wouk in hig Tadaias: 78

Most world cultures and religions have a creation myth or story like

the one in the Hebrew Scriptures that provides the groundwork of creation, a kind of blueprint of the cosmos and its origins: How did it all begin? What gods or goddesses were involved? What or who

Hoving remarhed

mie

keeps the present world from collapsing into chaos? and Where is the whole thing headed? Creation stories usually reveal the origins of human beings, food, fire, and death. After creating a picture of

mathematically caleulable regularityin Hhepassages ofthe

the world, creation myths usually define the role that human beings _| Planets through the play in the universe and how they might participate in the upkeep AusbaganS, and purpose of the world. Such participation is typically embodied ener

in religious rituals performed throughout the year, in which the needs of human beings are intertwined with the annual seasons. Creation stories usually involve analogies with the human mind or body: for example, creation is like dreaming or speaking or being born. It can also be represented as emergence from a cosmic egg, the trunk of a tree, or Mother Earth. Creation stories contain much more than prehistoric or primitive theories about the world’s begin-

nings; in them can be seen the fundamental attitudes and beliefs that shape a sense ofthe present. Cultures that believe in the sacred-

ness of the earth might value stories in which the earth is created from the body ofaprimordial woman or man, such as in the Indian

([Masapocariland)} or

Galhcevenvcon: ceived —in thatspecific period, in that specific place, forthe first tirneinhuman history—the grandi-

paxidexckematiies Ue Ione

naan EEE.

of celestial manifesta tion, disappearance and renewal, with 4 Ramses | Flanked byGods, fourteenth century ict.

whichit would be

prudent for man to

i

their rule from their association with powerful deities, This fresco from the tomb of

puchimselfin accord,

wiI

Ancient Egyption kings and pharaohs were worshiped as gods and received legitimacy for Ramses I shows Ramies flanked by Horus, god ofthe sky, anil Anubis, god of embalming (The ArtArchive/Dagli Orti)

~Josern Comment, mnythologist, 1974

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139

diversity of certain genres and forms. We include three of these “In the Tradition” sections in this edition: “Poets of the Tang Dynasty,’ “Andalusian and European Love Lyrics,’ and “The Romantic Lyric.” These clusters help students imagine a conversation among a variety of writers around similar ideas and forms.

79

PREEACE

“Time and Place” boxes further orient students in the era and culture connected with the literature they’re reading or help make thematic connections among events from different times and places. Thus, “Ancient Greece: The Origins of Greek Drama” gives students additional background for understanding the work of Sophocles, and “Nineteenth-Century America: The Seneca Falls Conference” highlights an event that relates to themes in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. UNPARALLELED

VISUAL FEATURES

The anthology’s superb collection of images is meant to help students relate to and understand literature that might at first seem spatially and temporally remote from their experience. Maps throughout the anthology bring students closer to the

Introduction

,

Be WML vieano ince

Images, maps, and Time and Place boxes lend immediacy and context to unfamiliar literature.

1425

1

Twentieth-Century America: The Armory Show Modernism in the visual arts entered the ‘ United States in the Armory Show in NewYork! in 1913, perhaps the most notorious artexhi{/] bition in American history. Although the show included about thirteen hundred works, most of them byestablished and conventional artists, the furor wascausedbythe European modernists, painters like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, and Wassily Kandinsky.

Their works shocked the American public who were used to conventional realism, The primi- Wassily Kandinsky,Composition 4,191 This example ‘ofKandinsky’s workwaspaintedonlytwo years before the tivism of Gauguin; the “childish, crude, and famous Armory Showof1913. Hisiterworksbecame amateurish” work, asonecritic pucit, by ‘even moreabstract andexpressionistic. (The ArtArchive) Matisse; and the fragmented images ofthe cubists offended viewers who described these paintings as “nasty, lewd, immoral, and indecent.” Even ex-President Theodore Roosevelt realism of the great social novels of | became an art critic, commenting, “There is no teenth century—works like Th: reason why people should not call themselves Fair (1848) or Tolstoy's War andPea Cubists, or Octogonists, Parallelopipedonists, (1865-69) —thepainters turned ai or Knights of the Isosceles Triangle, or Brothpopular literary and historical subj ers oftheCosine, if theysodesire; asexpressportray the painter's inner vision. ing anything serious and permanent, oneterm of the cubists fragmented their subj is fatuous as another.” discontinuous images, like the ima; The painting in the show that proved most

offensive was Marcel Duchamp's cubist classic Nude Descending aStaircase, depicting — several fragmented figures superimposed sequentially to give the sense of motion. Picasso said that cubism depicted “not what

you see, butwhatyou know is there,” giving

the painter’s own inner vision primacy as the

subject of apainting. Like the modernist

‘writers who retreated from thepanoramic

1224

IN THE WORLD: COLONIALISM

AND INDEPENDENCE

dream, but the cubist abstractions

the most revolutionary works in the painting by the Russian Wassily Kan Improvisation No, 27, took moderni:

step further by depicting brightly images that had no referent in the

tall, Kandinsky said the imagesca his unconscious mindand thepain perhaps the first example of what |i

come to be called abstract expressi MALIA 980 INDIAN OCEAN

1960 Date of independence Former ruler

United Kingdom BD France

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CT) Belgium

Portugal

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Spain

Ind

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TO Word Wert

The Decolonization ofAfrica, 19s1-2000

‘After World War Il, African countries gained independence, sometimes pencefully and sometimes after armedstruggle. The transition from European rule to self-governing nations was aften followed by greater poverty, dictatorship, war, or famine in much of the continent. Striving for political, economic, and educational progress proved a difficult process.

Preface

regions various literatures have come from, illustrating shifting national bound-

aries, industrial growth, the effects of conquest and colonialism, and the travels of

Odysseus, Candide, Basho, and Olaudah Equiano. Illustrations —art, photographs, cartoons, and cultural artifa—cts offer perspectives on the context of literary works and their present-day relevance. Medieval images of Roland in the architecture of the Chartres Cathedral, twentieth-century performances of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the ad Harriet Jacobs’s owner ran for her capture and return, and a nineteenth-century Nigerian sculpture of a European missionary are

just a few examples.

PRINT AND ONLINE ANCILLARIES

The instructor’s manual,

Resources for Teaching THE BEDFORD

ANTHOLOGY

OF

WorLD LITERATURE, Compact Edition, provides additional information about the anthology’s texts and authors; suggestions for discussion, research, and writing, both in the classroom and beyond; and suggestions for drawing additional connections among the various texts in the anthology. Lists of related print and media resources for each selection are also included. The manual concludes with advice for developing a world literature syllabus and sample syllabi. Students using the free companion site at bedfordstmartins.com/worldlit compact will find additional historical background, quizzes, annotated research links, additional information about particular authors, and discussions of the enduring twenty-first century relevance of particular works. Web links throughout the anthology direct students to additional content on the free companion site. Award-winning trade titles are available for packaging at significant savings. Add more value and choice to your students’ learning experiences by packaging The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition, with any of a thousand titles from Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Picador; St. Martin’s Press; and other Macmil-

lan trade publishers —at discounts of up to 50 percent off the regular price. To learn more, contact your local Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative. To see a complete list of titles available for packaging, go to bedfordstmartins.com/tradeup. The broad spectrum of literary texts, practical and accessible editorial apparatus, and teachable organization of the anthology offer teachers and students choices for navigating the familiar and unfamiliar territories of world literature. For some students, the excitement of discovery will lie in the exotic details of a foreign setting or in the music of a declaration of love, while others will delight in the broad panorama of history they construct when reading a variety of works from different traditions written around the same time. Others may find the contrast between cultures or historical eras to be the defining moment of discovery. Any number of possibilities exist for our students as they come into imaginative and critical contact with the people, places, and worlds that exist between the covers of The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition.

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This anthology and its predecessors began in a team-taught, multicultural “great books” course at the University of New Mexico, initially developed with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant gave us ample time to generate the curriculum for the course, and it also supported the luxury and challenge of team teaching. This anthology reflects the discussions of texts and teaching strategies that took place over many years among ourselves and colleagues who have participated with us in teaching the course—Cheryl Fresch, Virginia Hampton, Mary Rooks, Claire Waters, Richard K. Waters, Mary Bess Whidden, and most recently Feroza Jussawalla, Ron Shumaker, Birgit Schmidt-Rosemann, and Robin Runia. We

especially want to thank our cherished colleague, co-teacher, and co-editor Patricia Clark Smith, whose creativity, camaraderie, and command of the world’s literatures

and languages are felt throughout these pages. Without her generous spirit and laughter, her insight and vision, her dedication to our students, and her love of life

and teaching this anthology would not be what it is today. We also acknowledge Joseph B. Zavadil, who began our first anthology with us but died in the early stages of its development. Joe’s wit, scholarship, and humanity also endures with us. Above all, we must thank the hundreds of students in our world literature classes over the last twenty years at the University of New Mexico. From their questions, challenges, suggestions, and ideas—and from their patience and curiosity—we have fashioned not only an anthology but a way of teaching world literature as a conversation in context—a way of teaching that we share here with our readers. Reviewers from many colleges and universities helped shape the six books of The Bedford Anthology of World Literature (2004) with their advice and suggestions. We thank in particular a special group of reviewers who looked in depth at the manuscript for each of the six books, offering us targeted advice about the anthology’s strengths and weaknesses:

Cora Agatucci, Central Oregon Community College; Michael Austin, Shepherd College; Maryam Barrie, Washtenaw Community College; John Bartle, Hamilton

College; Jeffry Berry, Adrian College; Lois Bragg, Gallaudet University; Ron Carter, Rappahannock Community College; Robin Clouser, Ursinus College; Eugene R. Cunnar, New Mexico State University; Karen Dahr, Ellsworth Community College; Kristine Daines, Arizona State University; Sarah Dangelantonio, Franklin Pierce

College; Jim Doan, Nova SE University; Melora Giardetti, Simpson College; Audley Hall, North West Arkansas Community College; Dean Hall, Kansas State University;

Joris Heise, Sinclair Community College; Diane Long Hoeveler, Marquette University; Glenn Hopp, Howard Payne University; Mickey Jackson, Golden West College; Feroza Jussawalla, University of New Mexico; Linda Karch, Norwich University; David Karnos, Montana State University; William Laskowski, Jamestown College;

Pat Lonchar, University of the Incarnate Word; Donald Mager, The Mott University; Judy B. McInnis, University of Delaware; Becky McLaughlin, University of South

Alabama; Tony J. Morris, University of Indianapolis; Deborah Schlacks, University of Wisconsin; James Snowden, Cedarville University; David T. Stout, Luzerne

Acknowledgements

County Community College; Arline Thorn, West Virginia State College; Ann Volin, University of Kansas; Mary Wack, Washington State University; Jayne A. Widmayer, Boise State University; and William Woods, Wichita State University. We are grateful to the perceptive instructors—more than two hundred of them—who responded to our questionnaire in the early stages of planning the Compact Edition. These teachers shared valuable information with us about their courses, their students, and what they wanted in a world literature anthology: Allison Adair, Boston University; Kristelle Aherne, Masconomet High School; Donald Alban, Liberty University; William Allegrezza, Indiana University Northwest; Maurice Amen, Holy Cross College; Dustin Anderson, Florida State University; Janet Anderson, Clackamas Community College; Robert Anderson, Oakland University; Helen Andretta, York College-CUNY; Kit Andrews, Western Oregon University; Lauryn Angel-Cann, University of North Texas; Gabriel Arquilevich, Ventura College; Melvin Arrington, University of Mississippi; Clinton Atchley, Henderson State University; Carolyn Ayers, St. Mary’s University of Minnesota; Alison Baker, California Polytechnic State University-Pomona; Anne Baker, North Carolina State University; Christopher Baker, Armstrong Atlantic State University; Kimberly Baker, Illinois Institute of Art; Robert Baker, Fairmont State College; David Barney, Palm

Beach Community College South; Terry Barr, Presbyterian College; Bette-B Bauer, College of Saint Mary; Evelyn Beck, Piedmont Technical College; Daniel Bender, Pace University—Pleasantville; Lysbeth Benkert, Northern State University; Kate Benzel, University of Nebraska at Kearney; Eric Berlatsky, University of Maryland; Mark Bernheim, Miami University; Debra Berry, Community College of Southern Nevada; Stephan Bertman, Lawrence Technological University; Linda Best, Kean University; Michael Bibby, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania; Suzanne Black, Southwest State University; Marlin Blaine, California State University—Fullerton; Laurel Bollinger, University of Alabama—Huntsville; Scott Boltwood, Emory

and Henry College; Ashley Bonds, Copiah-Lincoln Community College; Shelly Borgstrom,

Brandt,

Jennifer Brown, Pamela College;

Rogers

Kent

State University;

State University;

Lucia Bortoli, Ohio

Christopher

State University;

Brooks, Wichita

Paul

State University;

Browdy de Hernandez, State University of New York at Albany; Kevin Lee University; Jeb Butler, Boston College; Jeff Butler, University of Iowa; Butsch, Jefferson Community College Southwest; William Cain, Wellesley Juan Calle, Broward Community College North; Lynne Callender, Legacy

High School; Mike Campbell, Yakima Valley Community College; Erskine Carter,

Black Hawk Col-Quad Cities; Cindy Catherwood, Metropolitan Community College— South; Patricia Cearley, South Plains College; Iclal Cetin, State University of New York at Buffalo; Julie Chappell, Tarleton State University; Amy Chesbro, Washtenaw Community College; Barbara Christian, University of Alaska-Anchorage Kenai Peni; Holly Ciotti, Glendale High School; William Clemente, Peru State College; Jeff

Cofer, Bellevue Community College; Barbara Cole, Sandhills Community College; Ernest Cole, University of Connecticut; Christine Colon, Wheaton College; Michael Colson, Allan Hancock College; Susan Comfort, Indiana University of Pennsylvania;

xiii

PREFACE

Helen Connell, Barry University; Randy Connor, Los Medanos College; Linda Conway, Howard College; Stephen Cooper, Troy State University; Deborah Core, Eastern Kentucky University; Judith Cortelloni, Lincoln College; Peter Cortland, Quinnipac University; Timothy Costello, Moorhead Area Schools; James Cotter, Mount St. Mary College; Robert Cox, Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College-Middlesboro; James Crawford, Walters State Community College; Merilee Cunningham, University of Houston—Downtown; Rita Dandridge, Norfolk State University; Craig Davos, Smith College; Anne Dayton, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania; Laura Dearing, Jefferson Community College Southwest; Paula Del Fiore, Cranston

High School West; Anna

Dewart,

Coastal

Georgia Community

College; Emily Dial-Driver, Rogers State University; Sheila Diecidue, University of South Florida; Martha Diede, Northwest College; S. Dobranski, Georgia State Uni-

versity; Mary Dockray-Miller, Lesley University; Brian Doherty, University of Texas; Virginia Doland, Biola University; Cecilia Donohue, Madonna University; Stephen Donohue, Rock Valley College; Maria Doyle, State University of West Georgia; Kendall Dunkelberg, Mississippi University for Women; Emily Dziuban, University of Tennessee—Knoxville; Mark Eaton, Azusa Pacific University; Marie Eckstrom, Rio

Hondo College; George William Eggers, University of Connecticut; Sarah Eichelman, Walters State Community College; Juliene Empric, Eckerd College; Bruce Engle, Morehead State University; Carol Fadda-Conrey, Purdue University—Main Campus; Scott Failla, Barnard College; Carol-Ann Farkas, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health; Pamela Faulkner, Concord College; Donald Fay, Kennesaw State University; Maryanne Felter, Cayuga Community College; Jill Ferguson, Notra Dame de Namur University; Suzanne Ferriss, Nova Southeastern University;

Lois Feuer, California State University-Dominguez Hills; Matthew Fike, Winthrop University; Hannah Fischthal, Saint John’s University; Johanna Fisher, SUNY Col-

lege at Buffalo; Christine Flanagan, University of the Sciences in Phildelphia; Agnes Fleck, College of Saint Scholastica; Erwin Ford, Albany State University; Robert Forman, Saint John’s University; Michael Fournier, Georgia State University; Stephen Fox, Gallaudet University; Christina Francis, Arizona State University; Wanda Fries,

Somerset Community College; Joanne Gabel, Reading Area Community College; Maria Galindo, Ocean County College; Paul Gallipeo, Adirondack Community College; Susan Gardner, La Sierra University; David Garlock, Baruch College CUNY;

Margaret Geiger, Cuyahoga Community College—Eastern; Erin Geller, Halls High School; Nate Gordon, Kishwaukee College; Kevin Grauke, University of North Texas; Karen Gray, University of Louisville; David Greene, Adelphi University; Nicole Greene, Xavier University of Louisiana; Loren Gruber, Missouri Valley College; Rachel Habermehl, University of Minnesota—Crookston; Keith Hale, South

Texas Community College; Dewey Hall, Mt. San Antonio College; Randolph Handel, Santa Fe Community College; Leigh Harbin, Angelo State University; Vasantha Harinath, North Central State College; William Harris, University of Texas at Brownsville; Betty Hart, University of Southern Indiana; Joetta Harty, George

Washington University; Janis Haswell, Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi; Roberta Hawkins, Shorewood High School; Wilda Head, Central Baptist College;

Kathy Heininge, University of California—Davis; Ed Higgins, George Fox University;

Acknowledgements

Barbara Hiles-Mesle, Graceland College; James Hirsh, Georgia State Universit y; Nika Hoffman, Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences; Randall Holt, Columbia Gorge Community College; Rebecca Hooker, University of New Mexico; Brooke Hopkins, University of Utah; Elizabeth Huergo, Montgomery College—Rockville; Laurie Hughes, Richland Community College; Byan Hull, Portland Community College—Sylvania; Elizabeth Huston, Eastfield College; Richard Iadonisi, Grand Valley State University; Candice Jackson, Tougaloo College; Robert Jakubovic, Raymond Walters College; Elaine Kauvar, Baruch College CUNY; Anita Kerr, North Carolina

State University;

John Lux, Baruch

College CUNY;

Jamie Marchant,

Auburn University; J. Eric Miller, Kennesaw State University; Deborah Preston, Georgia Perimeter College; Wylene Rholetter, Auburn University; Charles Riley, Baruch College CUNY; Mark Trevor Smith, Southwest Missouri State University; and Tami Whitney, Creighton University. For help in shaping the Compact Edition, we thank the many reviewers who provided in-depth feedback on the table of contents, choice of translations, organization, and editorial apparatus: Christine Abbott, Como Coso Community College; Oty Agbajoh-Laoye, Monmouth University; Heidi E. Ajrami, Victoria College; Allison E. Alison, Southeastern Community College; Lemiya Almaas, University of Minnesota—Twin Cities; Donald F. Andrews, Chattanooga State Technical Community College; Frances B. Auld, University of South Florida; Diane S. Baird, Palm Beach Community College; J.T. Barbarese, Rutgers University-Camden; Mojgan Behmand, George Mason University; Marilyn Booth, University of Ilinois-Urbana~-Champaign; Arnold J. Bradford, Northern Virginia Community College; Julie Brannon, Jack-

sonville University; Caridad Caballero, University of Georgia; Farida (Farrah) M. Cato, University of Central Florida; Barbara Mather Cobb, Murray State University; Ruth M. Cook, Milligan College; Carole Creekmore, Georgia Perimeter College— South; Robert W. Croft, Gainesville College; Jason DePolo, North Carolina A&T State University; Dwonna Goldstone, Austin Peay State University; David R. Greene, Long Island University—C.W. Post; Michael Grimwood, North Carolina State University; Anna R. Holloway, Fort Valley State University; Melissa Jackson, Midland College;

Lars R. Jones, Florida Institute of Technology; Rodney D. Keller, Brigham Young University-Idaho; Pam Kingsbury, University of North Alabama; Roger Lathbury, George Mason University; Dianna Laurent, Southeastern Louisiana University; Michael Mackey, Community College of Denver; J. Hunter Morgan, Glenville State College; John H. Morgan, Eastern Kentucky University; James Norton, Marian College; Keith R. Prendergast,

Pensacola

Junior College; Peter Quinn,

Salem

State

College; Wylene Rholetter, Auburn University; Jennifer O. Rosti, Roanoke College; Mimosa Stephenson, University of Texas at Brownsville; Matthew Stewart, Boston

University; Charles F. Warren, Salem State College; Sally Padgett Wheeler, Georgia Perimeter College—Rockdale. Finally, we thank the fourteen members

of our Editorial Advisory Board, who

reviewed the table of contents and sections of the manuscript at multiple stages, providing valuable advice throughout this book’s development.

PREFACE

Editorial Advisory Board

Efrossini Piliouni Albrecht, Auburn University Vince Brewton, University of North Alabama

Alan P. Church, University of Texas at Brownsville Alexander Dunlop, Auburn University Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, Creighton University

Frank Gruber, Bergen Community College Arthur F. Kinney, University of Massachusetts—Amherst Linda McCloud, Broward Community College Robin Mitchell-Boyask, Temple University Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Oberlin College Gordon O’Neal, Collin County Community College Dale Purvis, Georgia Southern University Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, University of Texas at Austin Theodore L. Steinberg, SUNY Fredonia

No anthology of this size comes into being without critical and supportive friends and advisors. Our thanks go to the Department of English at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and its chair, David Jones, who supported our work. Among our colleagues and associates, we particularly want to thank Helen Damico, Feroza Jussawalla, Mary Power, Carmen Nocentelli-Truett, and Ron Shumaker, as well as Paul Lauter, Manjeet

Tangri, and Fidel Fajardo-Acosta. Robin Runia provided research and editorial assistance and drafted the “Time and Place” box on the Encyclopedia Project. An anthology of this scope is an undertaking that calls for a courageous, imaginitive, and supportive publisher. Joan Feinberg, Denise Wydra, Karen Henry, Steve Scipione, and Alanya Harter at Bedford/St. Martin’s possess these qualities; we especially appreciate their confidence in our ability to carry out this task. Kaitlin Hannon guided the project in its early stages, and Carrie Thompson stepped in to develop the manuscript and see it through to completion. Abby Bielagus and Marisa Feinstein assisted with numerous tasks, large and small. Martha Friedman and Connie Gard-

ner served as photo researchers, and Jean Hammond and Anna Palchik fine-tuned the design. Adrienne Petsick enthusiastically developed and coordinated the marketing plan. We also owe special thanks to Karen Stocz for skillfully copyediting and guiding the manuscript through production, Elizabeth Schaaf for overseeing the production process, and Rebecca Merrill for producing the Web site. Most of all, we thank our families, especially Mary Davis, Patricia Clark Smith, Marlys Harrison, and Mona Johnson, for their patience and encouragement.

Paul Davis

Gary Harrison David M. Johnson John EF. Crawford

A NOTE ON TRANSLATION As anthologies of world literature have included an increasing number of texts from around the world, the-use of quality translations of these texts has become not only necessary, but a mark of excellence for a particular anthology. The necessity for reading texts in translation has brought a recognition that different versions of the same text vary in quality and accessibility—not just any rendition will do. Teachers now

request certain translations of favorite literary works, such as the Christian

Bible, Homer’s The Odyssey or Dante’s Divine Comedy. A translation might adequately communicate the literal meaning of the original work, but miss entirely its cultural background or the artistry of a passage—both of which support and enhance that meaning. At the other extreme is the impressionistic version that recreates the spirit of the original work, but deviates from its meaning, thereby misleading the reader. Every translator faces the dilemma of what Benedetto Croce has stated as the extremes— either “Faithful ugliness or faithless beauty.” Among the most important and most popular texts from the ancient world are Homer's epics and the Greek dramas; Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of Homer’s The Odyssey and Robert Fagles’s excellent versions of Homer’s The Iliad, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, and Sophocles’ Antigone are faithful to the original Greek and uniquely accessible to the modern reader. In a similar fashion, Horace Gregory’s translations of Catullus and Rolfe Humphries’ translations of Ovid span the distance between ancient Rome and today. Despite the fact that the scholarship of the King James Version of the Bible needs to be updated, we use this version because it is considered the

most literary translation in English. Not only do many readers of English grow up with the King James, its antiquated syntax and vocabulary resonate with a sense of the sacred, and are echoed throughout later literature in English. R. M. Liuzza has

provided us with what is possibly the most accurate modern poetic translation of Beowulf. The best translations do not merely duplicate a work but re-create it in a new idiom. Because of poetic elements such as rhyme, meter, stanzas, and figures of speech, translating poetry presents unique challenges. Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili’s translations of Federico Garcia Lorca are excellent, as are the translations by several hands of

the poets of the Tang dynasty in China. We use several different translators for Ghalib’s and Pablo Neruda’s poems, providing the reader with different perspectives on one of the major poets of the nineteenth century and one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. Translating from one culture to another adds an additional layer of complexity, be it philosophical or symbolic. For example, as one of the most important religious documents of ancient India, the Bhagavad Gita alludes continuously to the complexities of classical Hinduism; Barbara Stoler Miller offers a unique, interpretive bridge from this ancient text to a modern reader. She also provides us with a multivoiced version of the Indian classic by Kalidasa, Shakuntala and the Ring of Recollection, which also invokes Hindu themes— particularly that of dharma or duty. In terms of symbolism, while “cherry blossom” in a line of poetry to American readers may suggest a particular spring bloom or flower of the fruit tree, to Japanese readers XVIil |

Xviil

BREBAGE

“cherry blossom” invokes a cultural tradition that, depending on context, may suggest ideas of purity, transience, delicacy, and even of self-sacrifice. Richard Bodner’s translation of Basho’s Narrow Road through the Backcountry and Edward Seidensticker’s translation of The Tale of Genji are both sensitive to such cultural nuance, and both translations do justice to the poetic and prose passages of each work. Some translations are so excellent they become classics in their own right. This is true of David Magarshack’s translation of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, his rendering of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, and Richard Wilbur’s Tartuffe. Edith Grossman’s subtle and sophisticated version of Don Quixote is one of the best modern translations of a world classic. J. A.Underwood’s refreshingly updated version of The Metamorphosis demonstrates why Kafka remains one of the most influential and timely writers of the past century. No translation can substitute for reading the world’s classics in their original languages. Nonetheless, the art of translation in the modern age has reached such a high level of both accuracy and artistry that we now have access to a full range of translations of world literature in its variety and significance. The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition, offers what we believe are the most reliable and readable translations of the major works included here.

About the Editors Paul Davis (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin), professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico, has been the recipient of several teaching awards and academic honors, including that of Master Teacher. He has taught courses since 1962 in composition, rhetoric, and nineteenth-century literature and has written and edited many scholarly books, including The Penguin Dickens Companion (1999), Dickens

A to Z (1998), and The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge (1990). He has also writ-

ten numerous scholarly and popular articles on solar energy and Victorian book illustration. His most recent book is Critical Companion to Charles Dickens (2007). Gary Harrison

(Ph.D., Stanford University), professor and director of graduate

studies at the University of New Mexico, has won numerous fellowships and awards for scholarship and teaching. He has taught courses in world literature, British Romanticism, and literary theory at the University of New Mexico since 1987. Harrison’s publications include a critical study on William Wordsworth, Wordsworth’s Vagrant Muse: Poetry, Poverty, and Power (1994); as well as several articles on topics such as John Clare’s poetry, Romanticism and ecology, nineteenth-century culture, and teaching world literature. David M. Johnson (Ph.D., University of Connecticut), professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico, has taught courses in world literature, mythology, the Bible as literature, philosophy and literature, and creative writing since 1965. He has written, edited, and contributed to numerous scholarly books

and collections of poetry, including Fire in the Fields (1996) and Lord of the Dawn: The Legend of Quetzalcoatl (1987). He has also published scholarly articles, poetry, and translations of Nahuatl myths. His most recent book of poetry is Rebirth of Wonder: Poems of the Common Life (University of New Mexico Press, 2007). John F. Crawford (Ph.D., Columbia University; postdoctoral studies, Yale Univer-

sity), associate professor of English at the University of New Mexico, has taught medieval, world, and other literature courses since 1965 at a number of institutions,

including California Institute of Technology and Hunter College and Herbert Lehmann College of CUNY. The publisher of West End Press, an independent literary press with 120 titles, Crawford has also edited This Is About Vision: Interviews with Southwestern Writers (1990) and written articles on multicultural literature of

the Southwest.

Pronunciation Key This key applies to the pronunciation guides that appear in the margins and before most selections in The Bedford Anthology ofWorld Literature, Compact Edition. The syllable receiving the main stress is CAPITALIZED. MAT, AL-uh-bas-tur, LAF MAH-mah, uh-meh-rih-KAH-nuh, KAHNG-goh kar- TOON, HAR-vurd

a

mat, alabaster, laugh

ah ar

mama, Americana, Congo cartoon, Harvard

aw ay (ora)

saw, raucous may, Abraham, shake

SAW, RAW-kus

bet

BET CHURCH, DESK

church, matchstick desk Edward, melted meet, ream, petite cherub, derriere final

g h i igh (or i) ih

ng oh (or 0) ong 00 ow oy

got, giddy happenstance

MAY, AY-bruh-ham, SHAKE MACH-Sstik

ED-wurd, MEL-tid MEET, REEM, puh-TEET

CHEH-rub, DEH-ree-ehr FIGH-nul GAHT, GIH-dee HAP-un-stans

mit, Ipswich, impression

MIT, IP-swich, im-PRESH-un

eyesore, right, Anglophile Philippines judgment

IGH-sore, RITE, ANG-gloh-file

kitten

KIT-tun

light, allocate ramrod

LITE, AL-oh-kate RAM-rahd

ran rang, thinker

RAN

FIH-luh-peenz JUJ-mint

open, owned, lonesome

RANG, THING-ker OH-pun, OHND, LONE-sum

wrong, bonkers moot, mute, super

RONG, BONG-kurz MOOT, MYOOT, SOO-pur

loud, dowager, how boy, boil, oiler

LOWD, DOW-uh-jur, HOW BOY, BOYL, OY-lur PET RITE, RECH-id SEE, STH-tuh-zun SHING-gul ABESIE THIN THIS, WEH-thur un-TIL, SUMP-choo-us, LUV-lee uh-BOWT, vuh-KAY-shun, SUH-dun-lee FUR, BURD, TURM, BEG-ur VAK-yoo-um

pet right, wretched see, citizen

shingle test thin this, whether until, sumptuous, lovely about, vacation, suddenly fur, bird, term, beggar vacuum western

WES-turn

yesterday

YES-tur-day

zero, loser

ZEE-roh, LOO-zur TREH-zhur

treasure

Where a name is given two pronunciations, usually the first is the most familiar pronunciation in English and the second is a more exact rendering of the native pronunciation. In the pronunciations of French names, nasalized vowels are indicated by adding “ng” after the vowel.

Japanese words have no strong stress accent, so the syllables marked as stressed are so given only for the convenience of English speakers.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

y

ABOUT THEEDITORS

xix

PRONUNCIATION KEY

x

ce Seventeenth Century—Nineteenth Century, 1650-1850 3 Introduction and Comparative Timeline, 4 IMAGES: “The Bostonians in Distress,” 25; Middle Street of the Yoshiwara, 30; Lady with

Attendants in a Garden, 34; Scholar and Attendant, 36; Lady Elijah Impey, Wife of the ChiefJustice of Bengal, 1782, 41; Indian Procession, 43 MAPs: Europe in 1740, 16; British North America, c. 1763, 24; Population Density in Late

Tokugawa Japan, 29; Mughal India, 1707, 39

JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN MOLIERE [b. France, 1622-1673]

Tartuffe (Translated by Richard Wilbur)

45

51

IMAGES: Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliére, 45; Scene from Moliére’s Tartuffe, 50

PU SONG-LING (P’u Sung Ling) [b. China, 1640-1715]

116

The Mural (Translated by Denis C. Mair and Victor H. Mair)

119

IMAGE: Page from Liao-zhai zhi-yi, 117

xxii

CONTENTS

TEXT IN CONTEXT © 122 MATSUO BASHO[b. Japan, 1644-1694]

122

IMAGE: Basho, 122 TIME AND PLACE: Eighteenth-Century Japan: Genroku Period, 124

MAP: Bashé’s Journeys, 1684—1689,

127

Narrow Road through the Backcountry (Translated by Richard Bodner)

IN THE WORLD: Travel and Cuitural Encounter

131

756

IMAGES: View ofPart of the City of Benares, 157; The King of Siam’s Residence, 160 MAP: European Trade Patterns, c. 1740, 159 EVLIYA CELEBI [b. Turkey, 1611-1684]

167

FROM The Book of Travels (Translated by Robert Dankoff)

163

IMAGE: Ottoman Court, 162 LADY MARY WORTLEY

MONTAGU

FROM The Turkish Letters DENIS DIDEROT

[b. France,

[b. England, 1689-1762]

167

168 1713-1784]

172

FROM Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville (Translated by Jean Stewart and Jonathan Kemp)

174

MIRZA ABU TALEB KHAN

[b. India, 1752-21806]

178

FROM Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan (Translated by Charles Stewart)

179

IMAGE: Portrait ofMirza Abu Taleb Khan and Frontispiece to Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, Vol. 7, 1870, 180

SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ [b. Mexico, 1648-1695]

190

Love, at First, Is Fashioned of Agitation (Translated by S.G. Morley) The Rhetoric of Tears (Translated by Frank J. Warnke)

195

Response to Sor Filotea (Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden) IMAGE: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, 191 JONATHAN SWIFT [b. Ireland, 1667-1745]

Gulliver’s Travels

232

227

196

195

Contents

Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms

232

IMAGES: Portrait of Lemuel Gulliver, 230; Land of theHouyhnhnms, 233

ALEXANDER POPE [b. England, 1688-1744]

278

An Essayon Man 284 Epistle 1 284 FROM Epistle2 292 FROM Epistle3 294 IMAGES: The Rape of the Lock, 281; A Concert at Montagu House, 282

TEXT IN CONTEXT

296

FRANCOIS-MARIE AROUET be VOLTAIRE [b. France, 1694-1778]

296

IMAGES: Portrait of Voltaire, 296; The Love Letter, 298

MAP: Candide’s Travels, 303 TIME AND PLACE: Eighteenth-Century France: The Encyclopedia Project, 371 Candide, or Optimism (Translated by Daniel Gordon)

302

IN THE WORLD: Enlightenment and the Spirit of Inquiry

366

IMAGES: Ascent of the Montgolfier Brothers’ Hot-Air Balloon, 367; The Engine to Raise Water by Fire, 368; Jean-Pierre Blanchard’s Flying Machine, 369; Benjamin Franklin Conducting His Lighting Experiments, 370; Farming in Four Seasons: Irrigation Pump

for Lifting Water, 373

RENE DESCARTES [b. France, 1596-1650]

374

Discourse on Method (Translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross) FROM Part2 376 FROM Part4 379 IMAGE: Descartes’ Universe, 375

JOHN LOCKE [b. England, 1632-1704]

381

FROM The Second Treatise on Government BAIEN MIURA [b. Japan, 1723-1789]

382

384

From Reply to Taga Bokkei (Translated by Rosemary Mercer) IMMANUEL KANT [b. Prussia, 1724-1804]

390

What Is Enlightenment? (Translated by Mary J. Gregor)

390

385

376

Xxiil

XXIV

CONTENTS

THOMAS JEFFERSON [b. United States, 1743-1826]

Declaration of Independence

395

397

IMAGES: Portrait of Thomas Jefferson, 396; Engraving of the Declaration of Independence, 399

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT [b. England, 1759-1797] FROM A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

407

403

IMAGE: Mary Wollstonecraft, 402

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU [b. France, 1712-1778] FROM Confessions (Translator anonymous)

Book1

407

410

410 IMAGE: Detail from Portrait ofJean-Jacques Rousseau, 407

RAMPRASAD SEN [b. India, 1718-1775] It's This Hopein Hope

438

442

The Dark Mother Is Flyinga Kite Kali, Why Are You Naked Again?

Now Cry Kali and Take the Plunge! Why Should I Go to Kashi?

443 444

445

446

What’s More to Fear around This Place

447

(Translated by Leonard Nathan and Clinton Seely) IMAGE: The Holy Family: Shiva, Parvati, and Their Children on Mount Kailasa, 439

TEXT IN CONTEXT = 448 OLAUDAH EQUIANO [b. Africa, 1745-1797]

448

IMAGES: Portrait of Olaudah Equiano, 449; Slave Ship, 450

TIME AND PLACE: Nineteenth-Century Americas: The Haitian Revolution, 453 mae: The Voyages of Olaudah Equiano, 456

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano 455 FROM Chapter 1 [Equiano’s Igbo Roots] 455 FROM Chapter 2 [Captivity and Slavery; The Slave Ship] 467 FROM Chapter 3 [Sold to Captain Pascal;

ANew Name]

477

FROM Chapter 4 [Baptism and the Desire for Freedom] 473 FROM Chapter 5 [Sold to Robert King; The Horrors of the West Indies] FROM Chapter 7 [Freedom]

485

477

Contents

FROM Chapter 9 [London; Self Improvement] FROM Chapter 10 [Conversion] 490 FROM Chapter 12 [Conclusion] 492

488

IN THE WORLD: Slave Narratives and Emancipation

494

IMAGE: Cover of Harper’s Weekly, “The First Vote,” 495; “In de Lan’ o’ Cotton,” 497 HARRIET A. JACOBS (LINDA BRENT) [b. United States, c. 1813-1897]

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl 507 Chapter 1: Childhood 501 FROM Chapter 2: The New Master and Mistress 503 FROM Chapter 5: The Trials of Girlhood 504 Chapter 6: The Jealous Mistress 506 Chapter 10: A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl’s Life FROM Chapter 21: The Loophole of Retreat 573 FROM Chapter 23: Stillin Prison 575 FROM Chapter 29: Preparations for Escape 517 FROM Chapter 30: Northward Bound 520

570

IMAGE: Advertisement for Capture of Harriet Jacobs, July 4, 1835, 500 FREDERICK DOUGLASS

[b. United States, 1818?-1895]

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Chapter I[Childhood] 522 FROM Chapter II [Great House Farm] 525 FROM Chapter V [Move to Baltimore] 527 FROM Chapter VI [Learning to Read and Write] Chapter VII [Literacy] 529

FROM Chapter X [Attempted Escape] FROM Chapter XI [Freedom] 535

Emancipation Proclaimed

520

522

528

532

540

IMAGE: Portrait of Frederick Douglass, 521 AFRICAN AMERICAN FOLK SONGS [United States, Eighteenth—Early Nineteenth Centuries]

Go Down, Moses

Deep River

544

545

548

Follow the Drinkin Gourd

549

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Chile Hold On! John Henry

550 557

IMAGE: Slave Quarters, Hermitage Plantation, 544

549

499

XXv1

CONTENTS

TEXT IN CONTEXT

= 553

JOHANN WOLFGANG von GOETHE IMAGES: Goethe in the Campagna,

[b. Germany, 1749-1832]

553

555; Faust and Mephistopheles in the Witches Cave, 558

TIME AND PLACE: Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Eroica Symphony, 713 Faust (Translated by Charles E. Passage)

560

Prologue in Heaven 567 FROM The First Part of the Tragedy 564 FROM The Second Part of the Tragedy 677 ActOne 677 Act Five 680

IN THE WORLD:

Faust and the Romantic Hero

770

IMAGES: Napoleon at St. Bernhard, 711; Japanese Samurai Armor, 717 ALESSANDRO MANZONI

[b. Italy, 1785-1873]

The Fifth of May (Translated by Joseph Tusiani)

779

719

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON [b. England, 1788-1824]

FROM Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto 3, Napoleon, 36-45

722

724

724

IMAGE: Traveler Gazing over the Mist, 723

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER [b. United States, 1807-1892] FROM Toussaint LOuverture

727

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE [b. Germany, 1844-1900]

FROM The Gay Science (Translated by Walter Kaufmann)

[283]

730

728

730

FROM Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Translated by Walter Kaufmann) 3 [The Superman]

726

730

IMAGE: Zoroaster or Zarathustra Educating His People, 729

INAZO NITOBE [b. Japan, 1862-1933]

FROM Bushido: The Soul of Japan IMAGE: A Soldier in Full Armour, 732

732

732

730

Contents

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[b. England, 1770-1850]

FROM Lyrical Ballads 741 Expostulation and Reply 741 The Tables Turned 742 Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

736

743

747

The World Is Too Much with Us

747

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Ode: Intimations of Immortality

747

748

IMAGES: William Wordsworth, 736; Tintern Abbey, 1869, 739

IN THE TRADITION: The Romantic Lyric

754

TIME AND PLACE: Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Death of Lord Byron, 759 CHARLOTTE

SMITH

[b. England, 1749-1806]

760

Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex The Sea View

767

767

WILLIAM BLAKE [b. England, 1757-1827]

762

FROM Songs of Innocence 762 Introduction 762 TheLamb 763 The Chimney Sweeper 764 Holy Thursday 765

FROM Songs of Experience 765 Introduction 765 Earth’s Answer 766 Holy Thursday 767 The Chimney Sweeper 767 The Tyger 768 London 769 IMAGES: “The Lamb,” 763; “The Tyger,” 768

FRIEDRICH HOLDERLIN [b. Germany, 1770-1843] The Half of Life

770

771

Hyperion’s Song of Fate

7717

(Translated by Christopher Middleton) BERG) NOVALIS (GEORG FRIEDRICH PHILIPP, BARON von HARDEN 772 [b. Germany, 1772-1801]

XXVii

XXVlil

CONTENTS

FROM Hymns to the Night (Translated by Charles Passage) Yearning for Death 773

ALPHONSE pe LAMARTINE [b. France, 1790-1869} The Lake (Translated by Andrea Moorhead) JOHN KEATS [b. England, 1795-1821]

Ode onaGrecian Urn

775

776 778

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer Ode toa Nightingale

773

779

779 782

IMAGE: Portrait ofJohn Keats, 778

ANNETTE von DROSTE-HULSHOFF

[b. Germany, 1797-1848]

On the Tower (Translated by Ruth Angress)

In the Grass (Translated by James Edward Tobin)

HEINRICH HEINE [b. Germany, 1797-1856]

785

786

A Spruce is standing lonely (Translated by Gary Harrison) The Minnesingers (Translated by Louis Untermeyer)

787

The Silesian Weavers (Translated by Aaron Kramer)

788

The Asra (Translated by Ernst Feise)

784

784

787

789

IMAGE: Portrait of Heinrich Heine, 787

GIACOMO LEOPARDI [b. Italy, 1798-1837] The Infinite (Translated by Ottavio M. Casale)

To Sylvia (Translated by Ottavio M. Casale)

790 791

791

The Solitary Thrush (Translated by Eamon Grennan)

ROSALIA pe CASTRO [b. Galicia (Spain), 1837-1885]

793

795

I Tend a Beautiful Plant (Translated by Lou Charnon-Deutsch)

795

It Is Said Plants Cannot Speak (Translated by Lou Charnon-Deutsch)

796

A glowworm scatters flashes through the moss (Translated by S. Griswold Morley)

797

The ailing woman felt her forces ebb (Translated by S. Griswold Morley)

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

[b. England, 1772-1834]

803

799

798

Contents

Kubla Khan

822

IMAGES: Portrait of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 799; Samuel Taylor Coleridge Table Talking, 800

GHALIB (MIRZA ASADULLAH BEG KHAN) [b. India, 1797-1869] The drop dies in the river (Translated by W.S. Merwin)

823

827

Why didn’t I shrink in the blaze of that face? (Translated by Adrienne Rich) Is it you, O God? (Translated byAdrienne Rich)

828

829

It is a long time since my love stayed with me here (Translated by W.S. Merwin) There are a thousand desires like this (Translated by W.S. Merwin)

Don’t Skimp with Me Today (Translated by Robert Bly with Sunil Dutta) A Lamp in a Strong Wind (Translated by Robert Bly with Sunil Dutta)

829

830

830 831

IMAGE: Ghalib, 825

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN [b. Russia, 1799-1837]

8317

The Bronze Horseman (Translated by D. M. Thomas)

836

the Palace of Peter the Great and the Senate House IMAGES: Portrait of Pushkin, 833; View of at St. Petersburg, 835

WALT WHITMAN

[b. United States, 1819-1892]

FROM Song of Myself

845

849

1, 2, 5, 6, 16, 17, 21, 24, 31,32,48-52

Facing West from California’s Shores

849

860

IMAGE: Daguerreotype of Walt Whitman, 845

ow Nineteenth Century—Twenty-First Century, 1850—Present 863 aaa RE

EE

Introduction and Comparative Timeline, 864 War IMAGES: East River Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge), 871; Scene from the Sino-Japanese in Korea, 873; Calcutta, 875; Aftermath of Hiroshima, 889 er

HERMAN MELVILLE [b. United States, 1819-1891]

Bartleby the Scrivener

299

903

and round IMAGES: Herman Melville, 899; “Moby Dick swam swiftly round the wrecked crew,” 901

KKIK

CONTENTS

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE [b. France, 1821-1867] To the Reader (Translated by Stanley Kunitz)

929

933

The Albatross (Translated by Richard Wilbur)

934

Correspondences (Translated by Richard Wilbur)

935

Hymn to Beauty (Translated by Dorothy Martin)

935

Carrion (Translated by Richard Howard)

936

IMAGES: Charles Baudelaire, 929; Boulevard des Capuchines and the Thédtre du Vaudeville in 1889, 931

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT [b. France, 1821-1880]

A Simple Heart (Translated by Arthur McDowall)

938

941

IMAGE: Gustave Flaubert Dissecting Madame Bovary, 939 FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY [b. Russia, 1821-1881]

963

FROM The Brothers Karamazov (Translated by Constance Garnett)

The Grand Inquisitor

968

968

IMAGE: Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky, 965

TEXT IN CONTEXT LEO TOLSTOY

983

[b. Russia, 1828-1910]

983

IMAGES: Count Leo Tolstoy, 983; Tolstoy working in the fields, 985 TIME AND PLACE: Nineteenth-Century Europe: Darwin’s Origin of Species, 1029

The Death of Ivan Ilych (Translated by David Magarshack)

IN THE WORLD: Society and Its Discontents

989

1037

IMAGES: The Scream, 1032; Hetton Colliery, 1033

CHARLES DICKENS [b. England, 1812-1870]

FROM Our Mutual Friend Chapter XI: Podsnappery

1037

1038 1038

IMAGE: Podsnappery, 1037 KARL MARX

[b. Germany, 1818-1883]

1039

FRIEDRICH ENGELS [b. Germany, 1820-1895]

1039

FROM The Communist Manifesto (Translated by Samuel Moore)

I. Bourgeois and Proletarians

1040

1040

Contents IMAGES: Portrait of Karl Marx, 1039; Friedrich Engels, 1039

GUY DE MAUPASSANT [b. France, 1850-1893] Regret (Translated.by Roger Colet) 1049

1048

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE [b. Germany, 1844-1900]

1053

FROM The Gay Science (Translated by Walter Kaufmann) The Madman 1053 EMILE ZOLA [b. France, 1840-1902]

1054

Thérése Raquin (Translated by Leonard Tancock)

INAZO NITOBE [b. Japan, 1862-1933]

TEXT IN CONTEXT

1055

1055

FROM Preface to the Second Edition

FROM Bushido: The Soul of Japan

1053

1056 1056

058

HENRIK IBSEN [b. Norway, 1828-1906]

1058

IMAGES: Henrik Ibsen, 1059; Claire Bloom as Nora in A Doll’s House, 1061; Janet McTeer as Nora and Owen Teale as Torvald, 1062

TIME AND PLACE: Nineteenth-Century America: The Seneca Falls Conference, 1063

A Doll’s House (Translated by William Archer)

1065

IN THE WORLD: The Emancipation of Women = 1717 iMAGES: Liberty Leading the People, 1118; “Franchise for females,” 1119

EMILIA PARDO BAZAN [b. Spain, 1852-1921] The Revolver (Translated byAngel Flores)

1120

1122

HIGUCHI ICHIYO (HIGUCHI NITSUKO) [b. Japan, 1872-1896]

1124

The Thirteenth Night (Jiisan’ya) (Translated by Robert Lyons Danly)

1126

RASSUNDARI DEVI fb. India, c. 1810-7}

1137

FROM Amar Jiban (My Life) (Translated by Tanika Sarkar)

1138

XXKI

XXxil

CONTENTS

EMILY DICKINSON [b. United States, 1830-1886]

I know that He exists

1747

1144

I never lost as much but twice

1145

A narrow Fellowin the Grass

1145

Split the Lark—and you'll find the Music—

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers— I died for Beauty — but was scarce

1147

The Brain— is wider than the Sky— I dwell in Possibility—

1148

[heard a Fly buzz—whenI died—

1149

1749

They shut me up in Prose—

1750

Much Madness is divinest Sense—

Ilikealookof Agony

1147

1147

I like to see it lap the Miles— In Winterin my Room

1146

1146

1751

1157

Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

1757

My Life had stood —a Loaded Gun— = 1752 The Soul has Bandaged moments— Success is counted sweetest

1752

1753

TEXT IN CONTEXT © 1754 JOSEPH CONRAD

[b. Poland, 1857-1924]

1154

IMAGES: Portrait of Conrad, 1154; Two Youths from the Congo, 1157 MAP: Congo Free State, 1890, 1160

TIME AND PLACE: Twentieth-Century India: The Partition of Bengal, 1227 Heart of Darkness

1159

IN THE WORLD: Colonialism and Independence

1220

IMAGE: L’Africa E il Continente di Domani (Africa Is the Continent of Tomorrow), 1221 MAPS: The Colonization of Africa, 1880—1939, 1223; The Decolonization of Africa, 1951—2000 , 1224

RUDYARD KIPLING [b. India, 1865-1936] The White Man’s Burden

1228

1228

Contents

IMAGE: The Rhodes Colossus, 1229

GEORGE WASHINGTON WILLIAMS [b. United States, 1849-1891] FROM An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II 1237

1237

IMAGE: French and German Administrators Agreeing on New Franco-German

Boundary Lines in Lobaye Marshes, Congo, 1232 MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL CLEMENS) [b. United States, 1835-1910]

FROM King Leopold’s Soliloquy

1238

RAJA RAO [b. India, 1909-2006]

1241

Foreword to Kanthapura

1237

1241

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU [b. India, 1889-1964]

1242

“A Tryst with Destiny,’ Speech on the Granting of Indian Independence, August 14,1947

1244

MAP: The Partition of India, 1947, 1243

ANTON CHEKHOV [b. Russia, 1860-1904]

1247

The Cherry Orchard (Translated by David Magarshack)

1251

IMAGE: Chekhov Reading One of His Works, 1248

RABINDRANATH TAGORE [b. India, 1861-1941]. Broken Ties

1290

1293

IMAGE: Rabindranath Tagore, 1290 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS [b. Ireland, 1865-1939]

The Lake Isle of Innisfree Easter 1916

1341

1347

1348

The Second Coming

1350

Sailing to Byzantium Ledaandthe Swan

71357 1352

Among School Children

1352

TIME AND PLACE: Twentieth-Century Ireland: Irish Independence, 1345 IMAGES: William Butler Yeats, 1341; The Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1344

XXXill

XXXIV

CONTENTS

LU XUN [b. China, 1881-1936]

1355

A Madman’s Diary (Translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang)

1358

IMAGE: Portrait of Lu Xun, 1356

VIRGINIA WOOLE

[b. England, 1882-1941]

1365

FROM A Room of One’s Own = 13717 Chapter 3 [Shakespeare’s Sister] 1377 Three Pictures

1387

The Fascination of the Pool

1383

IMAGE: Virginia Woolf, 1366

TEXT IN CONTEXT — 1386 FRANZ KAFKA

[b. Prague, 1883-1924]

1386

IMAGES: Franz Kafka, 1386; The Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, 1387 TIME AND PLACE: Twentieth-Century America: The Armory Show, 1425

The Metamorphosis (Translated by J. A.Underwood)

IN THE WORLD: Modernism

1391

1424

IMAGES: Marc Chagall, | and the Village, 1427; Cover of Minotaure, 1429 SIGMUND FREUD [b. Austria, 1856-1939]

1429

FROM Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis (Translated by Harry W. Chase)

1430

IMAGE: Portrait ofSigmund Freud, 1430 T. S. ELIOT [b. United States, 1888-1965]

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

1433

1434

ANDRE BRETON [b. France, 1896-1966]

1438

FROM The Surrealist Manifesto (Translated by Patrick Waldberg)

ABE KOBO [b. Japan, 1924-1993]

1438

1441

The Red Cocoon (Translated by Lane Dunlop)

1442

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ [b. Colombia, 1927]

1444

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Translated by Gregory Rabassa) IMAGE: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1444

1445

Contents

TEXT IN CONTEXT = 1450 T. S. ELIOT [b. United States, 1888-1965]

1450

IMAGE: T. S. Eliot, 1450 MAP: Europe in 1914, 1453 TIME AND PLACE: Twentieth-Century Europe: Guernica, 1476 The Waste Land

1458

IN THE WORLD: War, Conflict, and Resistance

1473

IMAGES: Free Drawing by Mercedes Vallejo, 1474; Scene during the Siege of Teruel, Spain, 1475; British Soldiers with Gas Masks, 1478; Portrait of anUnknown Prisoner, 1479;

Holocaust Survivors at Buchenwald, 1480; American Troops Wading across River, 1481; Israeli Soldiers by the Dome ofthe Rock, 1482

YOSANO AKIKO [b. Japan, 1878-1942]

1484

I Beg You, Brother: Do Not Die (Translated by Jay Rubin) WILFRED OWEN

[b. England, 1893-1918]

Dulce et Decorum Est

1484

1485

1486

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

1487

ANNA AKHMATOVA [b. Russia, 1889-1966]

1487

Requiem (Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer)

1489

IMAGE: Portrait ofAnna Akhmatova, 1488 NELLY SACHS [b. Germany, 1891-1970]

1497

O the Chimneys (Translated by Michael Roloff) PAUL CELAN [b. Romania, 1920-1970] Death Fugue (Translated by John Felstiner)

1497

1498 1498

TAMURA RYUICHI [b. Japan, 1923-1998] | 1500 A Vertical Coffin (Translated by Samuel Grolmes and Tsumura Yumiko) 1503 WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA [b. Poland, 1923] The Terrorist, He Watches (Translated by RobertA.Maguire and 1503 Magnus Jan Krynski) 1504 ANDREI VOZNESENSKY [b. Russia, 1933] 1505 I Am Goya (Translated by Stanley Kunitz)

1500

XXxVl

CONTENTS

TIM O’BRIEN [b. United States, 1946]

The ManI Killed

1505

1506

FADWA TUQAN

[b. Palestine, 1917-2003]

1509

Song of Becoming (Translated by Naomi Shihab Nye) YEHUDA AMICHAIT [b. Germany, 1924-2000]

1510

1577

God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children (Translated by Assia Gutmann) MAHMOUD

DARWISH

Victim Number 18 Identity Card

([b. Palestine, 1941-2008]

1572

1573

1514

(Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies)

BEI DAO [b. China, 1949]

1516

Declaration (Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall)

1517

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA [b. Spain, 1898-1936]

Ode to Walt Whitman

1578

1522

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

1526

(Translated by Stephen Spender and J. L. Gilt) JORGE LUIS BORGES [b. Argentina, 1899-1986]

1533

The Garden of the Forking Paths (Translated by Donald A. Yates)

IMAGE: Jorge Luis Borges, 1533 PABLO NERUDA [b. Chile, 1904-1973]

1543

Ode with a Lament (Translated by H.R. Hays) Sexual Water (Translated by H.R. Hays)

1548

1549

Hymn and Return (Translated by Robert Bly)

The United Fruit Co. (Translated by Robert Bly)

1550

1552

The Heights of Macchu Picchu (Translated by Jack Schmitt)

Ode to Salt (Translated by Robert Bly)

1554

Poet’s Obligation (Translated by Alastair Reid)

1556

SAMUEL BECKETT [b. Ireland, 1906-1989]

1557

Krapp’s Last Tape

1567

IMAGE: Samuel Beckett, 1557

1553

1536

1511

Contents

NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

[b. Egypt, 1911-2006]

1567

Zaabalawi (Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies)

1571

IMAGES: Naguib Mahfouz, 1567; Cairo, 1569

ALBERT CAMUS [b. Algeria, 1913-1960]

The Guest

1580

1584

The Myth of Sisyphus

1594

(Translated by Justin O’Brien)

IMAGE: Albert Camus, 1580

TEXT IN CONTEXT © 1597

CHINUA ACHEBE [b. Nigeria, 1930]

. 1597

IMAGES: Chinua Achebe, 1597; Yoruba sculpture, 1601; Nigerian servants transportinga British official, 1602

TIME AND PLACE: Twentieth-Century Europe: The Congress of Black Writers, 1701

Things Fall Apart

1604

IN THE WORLD: Images of Africa

1694

IMAGE: Cover of The Missionary News, 1695; Into Bondage, 1696

W. E. B. DU BOIS [b. United States, 1868-1963]

The Souls of Black Folk

FROM Chapter 1

1703

1703

1703

IMAGE: W. E. B. Du Bois, 1703

CLAUDE MCKAY

[b. Jamaica, 1889-1948]

To the White Fiends Outcast

1705

1705

1706

IMAGE: Claude McKay, 1705

LANGSTON HUGHES [b. United States, 1902-1967] The Negro Speaks of Rivers

1706

1707

IMAGE: Jitterbugs, 1707 COUNTEE CULLEN

Heritage

1708

[b. United States, 1903-1946]

1708

XXXVIi

XxXxvill

CONTENTS

LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR [b. Senegal, 1906-2001]

Black Woman

17717

1772

Prayer to the Masks

1773

(Translated by Melvin Dixon) AIME CESAIRE [b. Martinique, 1913-2008]

1774

FROM Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (Translated by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith)

GWENDOLYN

1715

BROOKS [b. United States, 1917-2000]

Tothe Diaspora

1721

CHINUA ACHEBE

[b. Nigeria, 1930]

An Image of Africa

White Magic

71722

1722

DEREK WALCOTT [b. St. Lucia, 1930] ALatin Primer

1720

1733

1736

1739

The Light of the World For Pablo Neruda

1740

1744

IMAGE: Derek Walcott, 1733

ALIFA RIFAAT [b. Egypt, 1930]

1746

My World of the Unknown (Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies)

SALMAN RUSHDIE [b. India, 1947]

The Courter

1749

1759

1763

IMAGES: Salman Rushdie, 1760; “We Are Ready to Kill Rushdy,” 1761 EDWIDGE

DANTICAT

Children of the Sea

[b. Haiti, 1969]

1779

1787

GLOSSARY OF LITERARY AND CRITICAL TERMS INDEX

1823

1793

The Bedford Anthology of

World Literature The Modern World, 1650-The Present

Portuguese Caravels Leaving to Explore the World, 1775 The eighteenth century was a time of unprecedented global communication — political, social, economic, and literary. These painted blue tiles are found on the walls of the town of Paco de Arcos, near Lisbon, Portugal. (The Art Arch

venteenth Century

al Ko)

ra

nelarcaeleem@aetael

1850

ungling Doctor Faust’s order to dispossess an aging rustic couple from their picturesque cottage in a linden grove, the devil Mephistopheles and his crew set fire to the place. In the ensuing inferno the innocent pair, Philemon and Baucis, their cottage, and their chapel—all signs of a vanishing agricultural world—are lost. A warden who has witnessed the fire from his tower encapsulates what it all means: “What once was a joy to see / After centuries is gone.” In this scene from Faust, Part 2, the German writer Johann Wolfgang von

Goethe characterizes the onset of modernity in Europe as the catastrophic collapse of an agrarian world cemented by feudal social ties and religious bonds. While that simple world was always something of an ideal, it is undeniable that accelerating socio-economic changes sweeping Europe in the period from 1650 to 1850 led to a transfer of power from a landed gentry to a commercial and manufacturing class whose center was the city, not the country. The forces of secularization, urbanization, and commercialization that promoted and accompanied

COMPARATIVE TIMELINE FOR 1650-1850

Date

History and Politics

1650-1659

1641

Dutch begin trade with Japan.

1652

Dutch colonists found Cape Town in South Africa.

Science, Culture, and Technology

Literature

1657

Great Fire destroys Edo, Japan.

1658

Aurangzeb succeeds Shah Jahan

as Mughal emperorin India. 1660-1669

1660 Charles II; Restoration of Stuart monarchy in England

1662

Kangxi (second emperor of Manchu dynasty) begins reign in China.

1664

:

1675-76 King Philip’s War between American settlers and the

Royal Society founded in London.

1668

Margaret Cavendish, The Grounds of Natural Philosophy

Moliére, Tartuffe

1666 Great Fire of London 1669 Hinduism outlawed by Mughals in India; many Hindu temples destroyed. 1670-1679

1660

1670s Celebi writes Book of Travels

:

Wampanoag 1675-78 Sikh rebellion against Mughal empire in India

1680-1689

1680

a

Tsunayoshi becomes shogun in Japan. Ashanti (Asante) Kingdom founded in West Africa. Pueblo

"Revolt in New Mexico drives out Spanish.

~ :

1680

Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria.

:

Introduction

these changes— and which are still at work today — extended their transformative reach to other areas of the world, such as India, Africa, and the Americas, and led

to new ways of thinking and feeling, new forms of art and literature, and new means of producing and disseminating printed materials, including literary works. The eighteenth century is the last century of what historians call the Early Modern Period, extending from about 1500 to 1800, although sometimes extended fifty years in either direction. While historians of Europe usually emphasize a break between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we must acknowledge that intel-

lectual, cultural, and political transformations in Europe, much less the world, do

not conveniently observe the temporal markers of the Roman calendar. Writers who exerted a profound influence upon the Enlightenment, for example, such as René Descartes (1596-1650), Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliére (1622-1673), John Locke (1632-1704), and Isaac Newton (1642-1727), published their major works

closer to 1650. Moreover, in Europe, the eighteenth century—typically described

Science, Culture, Date

History and Politics

1680-1689

1685

(cont.)

1688

Literature

Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes;

absolute monarchy in France. Kangxi opens Chinese ports to foreigners. Glorious Revolution in England (James II deposed; William and Mary crowned)

1687

1691

1701-14

1688

Genroku period in Japan; beginnings of kabuki theater

1690

Locke, Two Treatises on

Government and Essay Concerning Human Understanding

SorJuana, Reply to Sor Filotea

War ofthe Spanish Succession 1702

1703

Newton, Mathematical

Principles

1690-1699

1700-1709

and Technology

Peter! founds St. Petersburg in

Russia

Basho, Narrow

1702

First daily newspaper published in London.

1704

Newton, Opticks

1706

Excavations of

Road through the Backcountry

Pompeii and

1707

Death of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb accelerates decline of Mughal empire in India.

1709

lenobu new shogun in Japan

Herculaneum begin.

1709

Invention of the

piano

6

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY—NINETEENTH

CENTURY

as an “Age of Enlightenment” characterized by an emphasis upon reason, rationality, and sociability —does not abruptly give way at the turn of the century to its successor, “Romanticism,” characterized by an emphasis upon feeling, imagination, and individualism. When, as we do here, we take into account the literary histories of Japan, China, India, the Arabic and Muslim world, Africa, and the Americas, the problems of periodization become even more acute, since each of these traditions developed within its own unique historical trajectory. In Japan, for example, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) and Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) are writers associated with

the Tokugawa era, a period stretching from 1600 to 1868. In China, Pu Song-Ling (1640-1715) and Cao Xueqin (c. 1715-1763) produced their fiction during the Qing

dynasty that began in 1644 and, though enfeebled in the mid-nineteenth century, did not end until 1911. Similarly, in India, Ramprasad Sen (1718-1775) and Ghalib

(1797-1869) wrote their poetry during the years of the Mughal empire that flourished from 1526 to 1857. Thus, some of the works included in the first half

Science, Culture,

History and Politics

Literature

and Technology

1710-1719 1713

1716

1710

Handel becomes music director to G I: a 22

1714

Fahrenheit invents mercury thermometer.

1720

Mammoth History of Japan by Tokugawa: Mitsukuni completed; Yoshimune lifts restrictions on study of Western thought

Peace of Utrecht; French

domination of Europe ends. Treaty of Utrecht ; g

Yoshimune shogun in Japan

1720-1729

1723

Collapse of Safavid empire

1726

Treaty between British colonists

oes 1726

Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

and the Iroquois League against France 1729

Bach, St. Matthew

Passion

1730-1739

1733-34

Pope, An Essay

on Man

1735

1736-94

Literary censorship in China

Linnaeus, Systema

Natupse

1739

Hume, Treatise of Human Nature

Global Contact, Conflict, and Exchange

Wi

of this volume fall outside the boundaries of 1650 to 1850 proper. All of the works included, however, reflect the changes in relations among world civilizations that were taking place during this time, when for better or for worse intellectual, cultural, economic, and political exchange and contact among the regions of the world were expanding at an ever accelerating rate. GLOBAL CONTACT,

CONFLICT, AND

EXCHANGE

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, European voyages of discovery and conquest, as well as the expansion of the Ottoman empire, had established global networks of trade and cross-cultural exchange. Improvements in technology— especially in shipbuilding, navigation, and arms— extended the global reach of burgeoning nation-states, so that by the seventeenth century Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands had established trading stations and colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, India, China, and the Americas. By the end of the eighteenth century,

Science, Culture, History and Politics 1740-1749

1740

Literature

and Technology

Frederick the Great assumes control of Prussia; Maria Theresa

head of Hapsburg empire 1745

leharu shogun in Japan

1748

Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws

1751

1750-1759

1755

1751-72 Diderot, Encyclopedia

ere

Lisbon earthquake kills 30,000 people.

1756-63

Benjamin Franklin invents lightning rod.

Seven Years’ War; massacre of

British in Black Hole of Calcutta 1757

Battle ofPlassey in India; British defeat Mughal forces in Bengal. 1759

1760-1769

1760 1762 1763

Color wood block printing in

1760s-70s

George Ill crowned king of

England.

: ‘ II takes power :in Russia. Catherine End of the Seven Years’ War. Britain gains colonial territories from

France and Spain, including

Canada, Tobago, and Florida;

Spain gets Louisiana from France.

1765.

Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism

The Stamp Act

. 1763

Montagu, The Turkish Letters

Japan with to iidchibegins Warunobu and Deamoro:

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY-NINETEENTH

CENTURY

England and France had extended their reach into those areas, as well. Capital,

goods, and commodities circulated around the world and began to transform economies and social habits throughout the world. Of course, one of the major trade activities from the sixteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century was the slave trade begun by Portugal, Spain, France, England, and Holland. The slave trade had a traumatic impact on the societies of sub-Saharan Africa. Political upheavals along the Gold Coast of northwestern Africa occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, as coastal entrepreneurs profited from the trade in human souls. This was a time of empire building in the Niger Delta, when such kingdoms as Benin, Dahomey, and Asante reached their zenith. It is estimated that between 1540 and 1807 as many

as 4.5 to 6 million Africans were transported from their homelands to be used in the silver and gold mines of South America, the sugar plantations of the West Indies and Brazil, and the coffee and tobacco plantations of the United States.

Date

History and Politics

Literature

1760-1769

1766

1766

(cont.)

1770-1779

Ali Bey becomes ruler of Egypt; proclaims independence ofTurks.

Science, Culture, and Technology

Pu Song-Ling, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio

1767-69 Bougainville sails around the world. 1769

James Watt patents steam engine.

James Hargreaves patents spinning jenny.

1770

Captain James Cook lands at Australia.

1770

1773

The Tea Act leads to the Boston Tea Party.

1772-82 Editing of The Complete Collection of

1774

1775

British East India Company officer

as ee

Warren Hastings becomes governor eeiada.

‘es (Siku Chuansh gories (Siku Chuanshu),

First Maratha War in India

1775-83

c. 1775

a collection ofall

Ramprasad Sen

printed works in China

poems

American War of

Independence 1776

Declaration of Independence

1776

Paine, Common Sense;

Smith, Wealth of Nations

1777

Haydn, C Major

Symphony 1780-1789

1781-88

:

1783

Treaty of Paris; United States recognized as an independent : nation.

Rousseau,

1781

Confessions

1784

Smith, Elegiac Sonnets

Kant, Critique of Pure Rea

=

1784 Kant, “What |s_ 1785

Enlightenment?” Charles Wilkins publishes first European (English) translation of Bhagavad Gita.

Global Contact, Conflict, and Exchange

9

This African diaspora transformed the demographic makeup of Africa, Europe, and the Americas and would have a profound and enduring impact on world history. Cultural and economic exchange proliferated throughout the Arabic world and Asia as well. Istanbul was a major center of trade, and in the early eighteenth century Sultan Ahmed III inaugurated the so-called Lale Devri or “Tulip Age” (1718-1730), leading to an increased economic and cultural exchange with Europe,

especially France, as well as to an increased diplomatic presence throughout Europe. Shifting balances of power and trade impacted the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires in the Middle East and India. In the seventeenth century the English, alongside the Dutch and French, had already established textile factories in India. After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the English basically controlled Bengal and had laid the foundation for the expansion of their empire into the nineteenth century. Eventually pressures from Europe and Russia would

History and Politics

ee

1780-1789 (cont.)

a

1787

Sierra Leone founded by British F colonists.

1789

U.S. Constitution ratified; George Washington elected first U.S. president. Storming ofthe Bastille; Declaration of the Rights of Man

Literature

Science, Culture, and Technology

Mozart, Don 1787-88 Giovanni and the last

1789

Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Lifeof Olaudah Equiano

1792

Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

1794

Blake, Songs of

three symphonies

and Citizen; French Revolution

begins.

1790-1799

1791

1792

1793

U.S. Bill of Rights ratified. Toussaint VOuverture leads slave revolt in Hispaniola (Haiti). French Republic founded by National Convention. Denmark prohibits slave trade. Lord McCartney’s mission to China to increase trade. Louis XVI

SLRS 1796

France.

David, The Murderof Marat

1795

Haydn completes the twelve London symphonies.

Innocence and Songs of

beheaded.

Napoleon invades Egypt. 1798-1801 1799 Napoleon becomes first consul of

1793

1798

Diderot, Supplement

to the Voyage of

1796 Jenner develops

Bougainville Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical

1799

Ballads

vaccine against smallpox. Rosetta Stone discovered in Egypt by Napoleon’s

troops; provides key to translating | Egyptian hieroglyphics.

10

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY-NINETEENTH

CENTURY

contribute to the decline and fall of the Mughals in India and the Ottomans throughout the Mediterranean in the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively. Japan and China, which prospered in the eighteenth century, strictly regulated contact and trade with Europe. The Tokugawa government in Japan issued a series of seclusion policies in the 1630s that prohibited Japanese travel abroad and severely limited European access to Japan’s ports. In 1757, the Chinese emperor Qianlong (1710-99) decreed that foreign traders could only land at Canton, and only between November and March. Nonetheless, European demand for tea, porcelains, furniture, and other commodities and goods grew during this period, and by the early nineteenth century pressure from the West eventually would lead to the collapse of the Tokugawa empire in Japan and the demise of the Qing dynasty in China. In sum, between 1650 and 1850 intercultural contact and exchange of various degrees of reciprocity linked the histories of nearly every geographic region of the world. By the eighteenth century, as historian J. M. Roberts puts it, the peoples of the globe had reached “the era of world history.”

Science, Culture, Date

History and Politics

1800-1809

Literature 1800

1802.

British gain control over central India.

1803

Louisiana Purchase

1804

Napoleon becomes emperor of

and Technology

Novalis, Hymns to the Night

1803

Abu Taleb, The Travels

of Mirza Abu Taleb

France, Haitian independence

Kuan

1804

declared.

1807

Slave trade abolished throughout

1807

British empire.

Beethoven, Eroica

Symphony;

David, The Coronation ofNapoleon Bonaparte Fulton’s Clermont

navigates the Hudson River.

1808

1810-1819

United States prohibits importation ofslaves from Africa.

1809

Ecuador gains independence from

1810

Spain. Height of Napoleon’s power

1811

Luddites destroy factory machines

1808

Goethe, Faust, Part |

1808 1809

Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 Lamarck, Principles of

Zoology 1810

Goya, The Disasters of

1811

Stephenson, first

1812

The Brothers Grimm, Fairy Tales

War

in northern England.

locomotive

1812. 1813

1814

Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Part |

Simon Bolivar becomes dictator in Venezuela.

Lord Hastings, governor of India,

declares war on Gurkhas in Nepal. 1815

Battle of Waterloo

1817

Coleridge, Sibylline _ Leaves

1816

Rossini, The Barbero

Seville Sai

ce

>

Intellectual and Social Change

ul

INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Despite ongoing conflicts, the period between 1650 and 1850 saw relative peace and— especially for Europe, China, and Japan—prosperity. Rapid population growth led to the increasing importance of urban life. On the heels of increased commerce and manufacture, many parts of Europe and Japan saw the rise of an energetic and thriving middle class whose intellectual and moral values presented various challenges to the traditional social and political order. The boundaries between social groups became more permeable and the question of personal and social identity became more complex as wealthy merchant families united through marriage with the families of traditional landed aristocrats. Greater public access to education as well as cheaper methods of printing and papermaking helped to promote literacy in many parts of Europe, the United States, China, and Japan. Middle-class demand for entertainment and diversions led to the transformation of classical literary forms and the development of new ones.

Date

History and Politics

Literature

ae

1810-1819

1818

France abolishes slave trade. British

1818

se

(cont.)

defeat the Maratha Confederacy in India.

1819

1820-1829

Leopardi, “The Infinite”

1820

Science, Culture, and Technology

1819

Gericault, The Raft of Medusa

1820

Ampere discovers

Keats, Odes Lamartine, Poetic

electrical current.

Meditations

1821

Greek war of independence begins.

1821

1823 1824

Brazil becomes independent of Portugal. Mexico becomes a republic. Monroe Doctrine Slavery abolished in Central America.

1821

First fossilized skeleton ofa dinosaur discovered.

1822

Schubert, Unfinished Symphony

1825

Erie Canal finished.

1828

Nerval, translation of Goethe’s Faust

of May”

Napoleon dies. 2 822

Manzoni, “The Fifth

1826

Holderlin, Lyrical Poems

1829 1830-1839

1830

Heine, The Book of Songs

1828

Leopardi, “To Sylvia” and “The Solitary Thrush”

Slavery abolished in Mexico. Revolution in Paris; Louis Phillippe becomes king of France. Indian Removal Act; Native Americans

relocated to west of the Mississippi. Belgium gains independence. 1833

1827

Slavery abolished in British colonies.

1830 1832

Goethe, Faust, Part II

1832

Delacroix, Liberty

Guiding the People Horoshige, Fifty-three _ Stages of the Tohaido

1833

Lyell, Principles of

1834

Babbage invents

Geology; Hokusai, Thirty-six Views ofMt. Fuji principle of the computer.

12

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY-—NINETEENTH

CENTURY

In Europe—particularly in France and England—an intellectual revolution now known as the ENLIGHTENMENT shook the foundations of societies previously ruled by kings and the church. New faith in the powers of empirical science, rationalism, and philosophy to resolve social problems intensified the secularism that had taken shape during the Renaissance. In Japan, thinkers also promoted a shift from metaphysical speculation to pragmatism. Nro-Conrucianists debated the relative authority of the emperor and shogun (the hereditary military commander in feudal Japan), spurred on empirical methods of investigation and direct observation of natural phenomena, and advocated systematic programs of education.

In China, philosophers such as Huang Zong-Xi (Huang Tsung-hsi, 1610-1695) and Wang Fu-chi (Wang Fu-chih, 1619-1692) took a more rigorous, scientific approach

to the study of science, politics, history, and society than had previous generations. Spurred on in part by the intellectual developments of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europe and America entered a period of widespread revolution and reform aimed at toppling the vestiges of absolute monarchy and

Science, Culture,

History and Politics 1830-1839

(cont.)

1836

The Alamo

1837

Victoria becomes queen of Great Britain.

Literature

1837

and Technology

Pushkin, The Bronze ee

1839

1840-1849

Independent Republic of Natal founded by Boers. 1839-42 First Opium War between Britain and China; Chinese ports opened to British traders.

1838

1839

1840

1841

Britain proclaims sovereignty over Hong Kong.

1844

Daniel O’Connell found guilty of conspiracy against British rule in eee Dominican Republic ecomes independent ofHaiti.

1843 1844 1845

:

Celebi, Book of Travels published. Droste-Hulshoff, Poems Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Daguerre develops

the daguerreotype photographic process. Goodyear vulcanizes rubber.

de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

1843

Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico 1844 Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed

Douglass, an American Slave 1846

1848

First Sikh War ends; Treaty of Lahore. Polish revolt

Revolt in Paris; Louis Napoleon

elected president. Revolution in Vienna; Metternich resigns. Revolution in Berlin. Revolutions in Venice, Milan, Parma, and Rome. Czech

revolt in Prague. Treaty of Guadalupe

Hildago ends Mexican-U.S. War.

1846

Whittier, Voices of Freedom

1846

Smithsonian Institution founded.

Howe invents sewing

machine. Berlioz, Damnation of Faust

New Literary Forms

13

aristocratic privilege that had relied upon the church to support its hierarchical policies and structure. The American (1776) and French (1789) Revolutions,

uprisings against monarchy inspired by Enlightenment rationalism, would in turn inspire revolutionary movements in Poland, Haiti, Venezuela, Mexico, and even

Egypt in the early nineteenth century. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution, which began in the last third of the eighteenth century, transformed material conditions and increased opportunities for trade, emigration, and colonization, so that by the end of the nineteenth century industrial Europe controlled much of the world, and Westernization both threatened and attracted the nations of Asia and Africa. NEW

LITERARY FORMS

The development throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of a literate middle class, with greater leisure time and spending power, allowed a publishing industry and new literary forms to thrive. As the population grew and standards Science, Culture,

History and Politics 1840-1849 (cont.)

1849

Literature

Mazzini proclaims Rome a republic. Revolts in Dresden and

and Technology 1849

California Gold Rush

1859

Gounod, Faust

Baden. British defeat Sikhs at Chillianwalla. Britain annexes the

Punjab. 1850-1859

1850 Outbreak of Anglo-Kaffir War 1850-64 Taiping Rebellion in China 1852 South African Republic (Transvaal) established. 1854 Commodore Perry negotiates first Japanese-American treaty.

1855 1856 1857

1858

Crimean War Britain annexes Oudh, India, and Natal. Peace ofParis ends Anglo-Persian War. Sepoy Rebellion against British rule Treaty of Tientsin ends AngloChinese War.

1858-63

1855

Whitman, Songof Myself

Mexican civil war; Maximilian

named emperor.

60-1869 Sah

1861-65

U.S. Civil War

1861

Jacobs, Incidentsinthe Life ofaSlave Girl

1862

Douglass, “Emancipation Proclaimed” 1863 de Castro, Galician Songs

14

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY-NINETEENTH

CENTURY

of living rose, the urban life of the middle classes began to dominate the attention of writers. Aristocratic models of classical tragedy and romance gave way to plays and novels exploring questions that were of particular concern to the BOURGEOISIE: social fluidity, personal identity, public morality, and private feeling. In Europe, the Nove developed as a realistic form that dramatized the moral and social life of ordinary people. In Japan and China, where it had a longer tradition, fiction was adapted to reflect the lives of the townspeople and to portray realistically the social life among all ranks. Middle-class readers also looked to literature for entertainment and instruction. Poets and playwrights turned away from the highly stylized diction and formal structures associated with aristocratic culture and classical conventions and began to use more colloquial language and more popular forms. The early Romantic poets in Europe revived and transformed popular forms such as the ballad, and they looked to folk tales and folk songs as sources of inspiration rooted in the lore and land of their local communities. The Romantic turn inward, the exploration of personal feelings and states of mind, led to the widespread interest in autobiographical or semiautobiographical works of fiction and nonfiction, the rise of lyric poetry, and an interest in the supernatural and fantastic. In the post-Napoleonic years, after 1815, a new cosmopolitanism and sense of nation building led Romantic writers to model their works upon exalted forms and verse styles, such as hymns and odes, for their lyric meditations and reflections. Dramatists in Japan turned to the relatively new forms of Kasuxt (live theater) and joruri (puppet theater) to reflect urban life, while those in Europe used the stage to exercise the much-valued wit of urban culture and poke fun at country life. And writers benefited from the new popularity of a variety of prose genres during this period. Readers were drawn also to almanacs, essays, autobiographies, confessions, collections of letters, and conduct books — guides designed to help people improve their social status. The increased contact among peoples from diverse parts of the world —both voluntary and involuntary—also had an impact on literature during this time. TRAVEL NARRATIVES, recounting the adventures of visitors to foreign countries as well as fictional accounts of travels that often satirized customs of the homeland,

enjoyed enormous popularity. The slave trade led to a new genre known as the SLAVE NARRATIVE, an autobiographical account of a person’s captivity, education, and emancipation. In America, CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES— first-person stories of women and men captured and released by American Indians — emerged as a subgenre. Literary production from 1650 to 1850 reflected the social, economic, and

cultural shifts everywhere in the world: the expanding range of human experience,

Europe: Enlightenment through Romanticism

the greater status and prosperity of the middle classes, and the increasing cultural and ethnic diversity of a world continuing to expand. EUROPE:

ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH

ROMANTICISM

Throughout much of the seventeenth century, Europe was in turmoil, some of

which spilled over into the eighteenth century. The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) saw fighting and confusion in all of Europe and heightened religious factionalism. A series of attempts on the part of discontented nobles in England and members of the Parlement of Paris in France to limit the powers of the monarch resulted in the English Civil War (1642-1660) and the Fronde (1648-1653). These conflicts

restricted royal power in England and strengthened it in France—leading to further revolutionary struggles at the end of the eighteenth century. As Europeans extended their reach to almost all parts of the world and enriched their countries with goods and raw materials from the colonies, they fought among themselves to seize or secure precious trade routes or promising colonial holdings. The Seven Years’ War (1756 to 1763) —in which Britain and Prussia joined forces

against Austria, Russia, France, and Spain—is considered by some to be the first global war. Land and sea battles raged over who could finally claim ownership of British, French, and Spanish colonial holdings in India and North America. At the end of the war, France gave up its claims in India and Canada and the land east of the Mississippi River to Britain and the Louisiana Territory to Spain; Spain in turn gave up Florida to Britain. At the end of the Seven Years’ War, Great Britain was in a position to become the leading colonial power in the world. Pressures for reform brought on by French intellectuals and the example of the American Revolution led to the bloody conclusion of the French Revolution. Beginning with the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the French people finally brought down Louis XVI, secured a share of power for the middle classes, and began to rebuild their society under the guiding lamp of Reason, literally idolized as a secular god. The democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were often bound up with (or soon followed by) nationalist movements. In the midst and wake of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) many countries, including Poland, Italy, Spain, Greece, Mexico, and Venezuela, engaged in

hard-fought struggles for independence and freedom that involved a nationalist self-fashioning. Out of these struggles came a new intellectual and cultural movement— Romanticism —that involved a recovery of local folk tales, a celebration of local histories and heroes, and a passionate attachment to local places, landscapes, and monuments. From this intellectual and historical ferment emerged a pantheon of heroes, many of whom pursued the contradictory goals of liberation and imperial conquest. While they fought for freedom and independence

15

===

Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire

200 200

ek

400 miles 400 kilometers

>

#

Stockholm

SE Petersburg

_ Volga R-

e Moscow

RUSSIA

ATLANTIC OCEAN

GE

e Madrid

;

Corsica ¢

SPAIN ie

- *Gibrattar (Gr. Br.)

NORTH AFRICA ee

I,

Europe in 1740 By 1740, Europe had achieved a kind of diplomatic equilibrium in which no one nation dominated. There were,

however, certain divisions ofpower: Spain, the Dutch Republic, Poland-Lithuania, and Sweden had declined in might and influence, while Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria had become more powerful.

16

Europe: Enlightenment through Romanticism

from the monarchs and feudal lords who had inherited power, or from imperial and foreign powers—such as the Austrian and Ottoman empires — they inspired nationalistic fervor as they consolidated smaller states into nations (for example, Italy and Germany) or, like Napoleon, pursued dreams of empire.

Enlightenment. In the eighteenth century, ENLIGHTENMENT thinkers and philosophers —known in France as the philosophes—set out by means of reason and direct observation to discover the fundamental laws governing nature, humanity, and society. The philosophes believed that such discoveries would free the world from tyranny, violence, and instability. If, they reasoned, universal laws such as those discovered by English scientist Isaac Newton (1642-1727) governed the natu-

ral world, surely similar laws must govern human nature and social institutions. The delineation of such laws was the project of David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), in which the Scottish philosopher attempted to “introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects.” By discovering laws governing “moral subjects” —such as knowledge, belief, the passions, justice, and goodness —human beings could learn to live together more harmoniously and perhaps experience unlimited progress. While many philosophes had doubts about how far such progress could go, by the end of the eighteenth century the Marquis de Condorcet’s Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1793) claimed “that the perfectibility of man is truly indefinite; and that the

progress of this perfectibility . . has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has cast us.” The Slave Trade. Ironically, the age named the Enlightenment was in at least one respect also an era of great blindness. Colonial expansion created a flood of new goods and materials in the trade networks, stimulating commerce and manufacturing. But since colonial trade focused mainly on labor-intensive crops such as sugar, tobacco, coffee, and cotton, many European fortunes were being built on

the foundation of slavery. As we can see from the sLavE NARRATIVE by Olaudah Equiano (1789) (p. 448), by the eighteenth century African traders from the kingdoms of Benin and Ife, among others, were selling Africans to Europeans in ex-

change for European goods. An estimated 4.5 to 6 million African men, women, and children were sold and sent to the Americas and the Caribbean, where they were put to work on plantations. When they died because of poor health or abuse, they were simply replaced by more men and women from Africa. Three times as many men, women, and children died from disease or mistreatment during the voyage from Africa to the colonies as actually arrived. Shackled together in rows so tight that they could hardly move, the captives suffered near starvation and

17

18

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY-NINETEENTH

CENTURY

dehydration; suicide was a powerful temptation. European empires were built in part on conflict within Africa, and resulted in political strife among and within African states and a seriously depleted population. The African diaspora would have a profound impact on world history and culture over the next two centuries, introducing elements of African culture to the rest of the world as well as leading to ethnic and racial tension.

Neoclassicism. Eighteenth-century artists and writers in Europe, Japan, and China also began to direct their attention to the tastes and concerns of the increasingly literate and prosperous middle classes. As a result, new forms of music, art, and literature emerged. Throughout Europe the arts shifted their focus from the courts and country houses of the aristocracy to the salons and coffeehouses of the bourgeoisie. Writers during the first part of the eighteenth century —in what is known as Neoctassicat literature — imitated classical models and placed emphasis on conventional form, public purpose, and urbane wit. Neoclassical refers to the classical tradition of Greco-Roman literature and mythology and an emphasis on classical values of decorum and wit (decorum signifies stylistic grace and the perfect balance between form and expression; wit denotes an inventiveness tempered by good judgment). Just as Newton had discovered general laws and a grand order in the cosmos, so the Neoclassical poet wanted to discover the general laws of art. In the works of Augustan-age poets such as Horace and Virgil, Neoclassical writers found rules governing art that they believed were equivalent to natural laws. In drama, these rules were characterized by the “unities” of time, place, and action derived in part from Aristotle’s Poetics. In contrast to the expansive plays of Shakespeare with their multiple subplots, Neoclassical dramatists such as Jean Racine (1639-1699)

limited their heroic tragedies to a single action, place, and time. In accordance with the principles of decorum, writers developed an elevated and formal poetic diction suited for serious subjects often drawn from, and almost always alluding to, classical and biblical history and mythology. The great Neoclassical writers saw these rules as flexible rather than as prescriptions to follow to the letter. The one precept that all Neoclassical writers agreed on was taken from Horace, who had said that all art and literature should both please and instruct. Cultures that value order and decorum tend to bring attention to their opposites — disorder and the grotesque—and beneath the polished surface of

Neoclassical works the prince of misrule threatens to break out. There is always a hypocrite or rake—a seducer without scruples—as in Moliére’s Tartuffe, to threaten the delicate codes of propriety and decency; always a Yahoo —a savage man—as in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, to disturb the all-too-perfect

Europe: Enlightenment through Romanticism

universe of the rational Houyhnhnms. One of the predominant forms of European literature in the eighteenth century was sarire, a gentle or biting critique of morals and manners that generally sought to instruct or to effect some kind of change in society. Satire appeared in all major genres, including drama, poetry, and prose. Tartuffe (p. 51) attacks the hypocrisy of the middle classes in France, as well as their complacent acceptance of rigid domestic roles. For Moliére, his comic play aimed to “correct men’s vices,” by displaying them in exaggerated form. This principle of HypeERBoLe— blowing things out of proportion—is found in the satirical fiction of the era as well, represented here by Voltaire’s Candide (p. 302) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (p. 232). Candide, which follows the episodic adventures of a naive young man of the same name, exploits the possibilities of the satirical tale, and uses Candide’s misadventures to attack the pieties of European society. Similarly, Gulliver’s Travels combines the formal features of the travel narrative with those of the satirical tale to ridicule what Swift saw as the hypocritical values, self-complacency, and vicious nature of the people of Britain. At the same time, he produces an immensely entertaining fantasy that anticipates modern science fiction. By the mid-eighteenth century, the conventions of reason and tradition had grown somewhat stale, if not stifling, and the critical temperament of the early Enlightenment became infused instead with a spirit of feeling. Decorum and urbane wit had to make room for a growing taste for the expressive, the meditative, and the spontaneous. Practical guides to manners flourished in the popular press, as the increasing number of middle-class readers sought to elevate themselves both economically and socially. In addition to the satirical tale, the novel,

and the autobiography, the TRAVEL NARRATIVE, or travelogue, was an immensely popular form of literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These accounts of journeys to “exotic” lands often took the form of letters, as in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Letters (p. 168). Europeans also enjoyed reading fictional accounts of their own countries presumably seen through the eyes of a foreigner; Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) and Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen

of the World (1762) are two important such works. On occasion, European readers could see themselves through the lens of actual travelers, such as Mirza Abu Taleb — primarily the Irish and the Khan, who recorded his impressions of Europeans in 1810. English into translated English —in his Travels (p. 179), The novet, focusing primarily on the morals and manners of the middle classes, stands out as the preeminent literary form of the later eighteenth century, taking the place of the satirical tale. Increasingly, the European novel concerned itself with sentiment and feeling, as in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, or The New Héloise (1761) and Emile (1762). Rousseau led a revolution of feeling, shifting the

19

20

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY-NINETEENTH

CENTURY

emphasis of the Enlightenment from reason to emotion, especially private emotion. In the exploration of the private self recorded in his autobiography Confessions (p. 410), Rousseau converts the travel narrative’s voyage to a new land of

striking contrasts into an introspective, sentimental journey, discovering human nature itself. In Confessions, Rousseau conducts his experiments in the laboratory of his own heart, examining the “chain of the feelings” that he claims have marked the development of his being. Rousseau’s writings reflected a growing shift toward feeling in the second half of the eighteenth century, and his writing exerted tremendous influence on European literature. Confessions anticipated the explosion of creativity and emphasis on imagination, feeling, and self-reflection that emerged during the Romantic era of the early nineteenth century.

Romanticism. Like the political revolutions in America, France, the Caribbean, Poland, and Spanish America, a revolution in philosophy and the arts sought to liberate its practitioners from the rules and conventions of earlier generations: The works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as we note above, inspired a turn from reason

to feeling and imagination. Whereas the Enlightenment had heralded reason and empirical experimentation as the primary means to discover truth and as the key agents of change, Romantics celebrated instead imagination and feeling as ways to truly connect with the world and oneself. Furthermore, for the Romantics, imagi-

nation and feeling were modes of truth that could free the mind from the imperial hold of the external world, the human heart from the restraints of social decorum,

the citizen from the chains of political tyranny, and the artist from rules and convention. Romantic poetry as a whole is characterized by its reaction against the conventions and rules of Neoctassicat poetry and by its emphasis on the innate, the subjective, the emotional, and the ideal. Neoclassical poets of the eighteenth cen-

tury held up a mirror to nature; Romantic poets illuminated nature with the light of the imagination. Nature serves not as a palette for the Romantic poet’s paintbrush but as a companion spirit that guides the poet in the act of creation. The Romantic poet looks upon nature not so much as a source of external impressions but more as a creative power that helps to free unconscious resources and break down the boundaries between the self and the other, the inner and the outer. As in Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi’s (1798-1837) “The Infinite” (p. 791) and German poet Novalis’s (1772-1801) “Yearning for Death” (p. 773), these meditations are

often also longings for the infinite, an elusive ideal, or an unattainable other. Thus, For more information about the culture and context of Europe from 1650 to 1850, see bedfordstmartins.com/worldlitcompact.

America: The

Colonial Period to Emancipation

many Romantic poems involve quests, similar to those of the medieval knight in search of the Holy Grail and Dante’s journey toward Beatrice. Indeed, in the late eighteenth century the word romantic was associated with the medieval and the Gothic. Unlike the medieval knight, however, the hero of the Romantic quest enacts a self-conscious meditation on his failure to attain the object of his desire. Despite their tendencies toward solitude and private reverie, Romantic poets, perhaps paradoxically, were deeply engaged with social issues and politics, particularly with the French Revolution. When the young English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) visited France in the first year of the Revolution, he found “The

land all swarmed with passion” and the people “risen up/Fresh as the morning star.” Many Romantic writers hoped that their poetry and philosophy would effect a similar transformation of society and its misguided values by transforming the consciousness of the individual. Thus, the most private reverie may resonate with

social and historical aspiration and anticipate a world organized by principles of human sympathy and love rather than self-interest and greed. Nonetheless, as a response to the failure of the French Revolution to realize fully the democratic reforms it had promised, many Romantic poets, including Shelley, Leopardi, and the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), qualified their sense of hope

with at best a cautious skepticism, at worst a deep pessimism about the present and the future. AMERICA: THE COLONIAL PERIOD TO EMANCIPATION

America in the seventeenth century was a place of religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity. People had come to the New World from all over Europe— from England, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Holland, and Belgium —for a variety of reasons. Some had fled persecution or run from their past; others were chasing their dreams. Still others, from another continent, had arrived in shackles.

While Boston was the center of Puritan culture, Philadelphia nurtured the Society of Friends, more commonly known as Quakers, who eschewed sacraments and ritual, turning to their “inner light” instead for spiritual guidance. Pennsylvania was also home to Mennonites, Baptists, Amish, Huguenots, and others who

accepted the invitation of William Penn (1644-1718), the colony’s founder, to enjoy complete religious tolerance. In New York and Maryland, Protestants settled alongside Catholics, Jews, and Anglicans; Anglicans settled throughout the colonies but particularly in the Carolinas, Maryland, and Virginia. By the eighteenth century the increasingly heterogeneous colonies were becoming more unified by means of commerce and trade, the need for mutual protection, and the desire for cultural exchange. Moreover, population growth, manufactures, and trade had created thriving cities, such as Philadelphia and

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Boston, that equaled those of Europe. Colleges began to appear. Harvard was founded in 1636, and by 1754, the College of William and Mary, Yale, and what

would later be Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania (the first secular institution of higher learning) were established. Presses for books, newspapers, and pamphlets proliferated, also started by Puritans in the 1630s. With the circulation of newspapers, essays, and pamphlets written by and about the colonists, a sense of identity distinctive from that of the Old World began to take hold in the people of the thirteen colonies. Early American Literature. Although American poetry and drama made some fledgling advances during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the great era of American poetry would not arrive until the nineteenth century. The earliest works of American literature were mainly diaries, letters, and journals describing voyages to the New World, explorations along its coasts or riverways, and journeys into its interior. During the colonial period, extensive histories appeared, such as John Smith’s The General History of Virginia (1624), which described the land

and the natives of these new places and recounted the plight of the colonists. Puritans wrote treatises and sermons on church doctrine, as well as spiritual autobiographies and philosophical reflections on religion and politics. These works influenced later autobiographical writings, including Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, one of the earliest CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES. Rowlandson interprets everything that happens to her as a sign of God’s judgment and grace, exemplifying the Puritans’ tendency to seek out evidence of salvation in their lives. By the mid-eighteenth century the political ideas of European ENLIGHTENMENT philosophers such as John Locke (1632-1704) and the new science of Isaac Newton (1642-1727) had reached the colonies. In contrast to the Puritan view of the world,

which emphasized human depravity and helplessness to change history, Enlightenment thinkers celebrated human potential to shape their world through reason and practical experimentation. The ideas of progress and human perfectibility as well as the appreciation of civil rights, social justice, and equality were a dramatic departure from Puritan theocratic views and served to boost the popularity of tolerance and government-by-consensus in the colonies. No American better represents the American Enlightenment than the community leader, inventor, and statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), whose life is a model of rational in-

quiry, experimentation, civic virtue, and humanitarianism. Benjamin Franklin’s earliest writings were satirical essays published in newspapers, which along with periodicals were flourishing by the 1750s. Franklin also wrote, edited, and published Poor Richard’s Almanack (1733-1758),

America: The Colonial Period to Emancipation

one of the most enduring of the ever-popular alman—acs eclectic compendiums of aphorisms, astronomical predictions, weather forecasts, and entertaining tidbits. Franklin’s popular Autobiography, written between 1771 and 1788, but not published in full until 1868, offered a chronicle of his life as well as an exemplary guide to the frugal, pragmatic, and useful life of an enlightened citizen. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776), which presented the case for American

independence, became an important document in the revolutionary politics of America, Britain, and France. The Federalist Papers, a series of essays published in

newspapers between October 1787 and April 1788, aimed to persuade skeptical readers of the need to ratify the Constitution. Written by Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), James Madison (1751-1836), and John Jay (1745-1829), these essays

have had a lasting influence on American politics and literary history. Of all the political documents from this period, none ranks higher perhaps than Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (p. 397), which exemplifies American

Enlightenment thought. In a rhetorical style that embodies Jefferson’s classical sense of balance and order, the Declaration catalogs American grievances against the English Crown while elucidating the idealistic principles of the new republic. Toward Revolution and Independence.

After the Peace of Paris treaty ended the

French and Indian War in 1763, Britain acquired the entire East Coast of North

America as well as Canada and the Gulf Coast, to the mouth of the Mississippi. In the same year, in response to Pontiac’s Rebellion —an armed effort by Great Lakes Indians to avert further encroachments on their territory and to reclaim their traditions— England issued the Proclamation of 1763, banning settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, and the Stamp Act of 1765, imposing taxes on legal documents, newspapers, and licenses. Despite protests England continued to legislate restrictions and taxes, which led to more civil disturbances, culminating in the

Boston Tea Party of 1773, when Americans dumped hundreds of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. The power struggle between England and America had reached an impasse. Approximately six months after the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to approve a Declaration of Rights and Grievances condemning England’s trade policies, British troops squared off against a group of Massachusetts militia known as minutemen; on the morning of April 19, 1775, a shot was fired, leading to the first casualties of the American War of Independence. As fighting fanned For more information about the culture and context of America from 1650 to 1850, see bedfordstmartins.com/worldlitcompact.

23

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In 1763 Britain imposed the Proclamation Line, which prohibited white settlement to the west of the established thirteen colonies, in what was known as an Indian Reserve. Britain also decided to maintain a freestanding army to protect its interests in North America, which included Canada. These moves infuriated the American colonists, who wanted more autonomy, and helped sow the seeds of the American Revolution that began a little more than a decade later.

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America: The Colonial Period to Emancipation

-

BOSTON

“The Bostonians in Distress”

After the Boston Tea Party, in which exasperated Bostonians threw English tea into Boston Harbor to protest rising taxes, England closed the port of Boston with the Boston Port Act of 1774. In this cartoon, Bostonians are incarcerated —cut offfrom food and supplies— forthem. (The Art Archive) and dependent on neighboring townspeople to provide

out through the colonies, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, beginning on May 10, 1775; within two months, delegates to the Congress signed the Declaration of Independence. It was July 4, 1776. For the next seven

years England and the American colonies were at war, which ended with the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783.

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With independence from England secured, the American colonists began to forge a nation. The new Congress called for a Constitutional Convention for the purpose of building on the 1781 Articles of Confederation, which had set forth the colonies’ first principles of union. The Convention delegates, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), emerged with a signed document on September 17, 1787, and by June 1788 nine states had ratified the United

n division of —the States Constitution. The republican ideals of the Constitutio — were unique government into branches, the independence of states, and equality to the eighteenth century. Later revolutionary movements elsewhere would use the Declaration of Independence and to some degree the Constitution as models for their own independence and governments.

Post-Revolutionary American Culture. The U.S. Constitution was based on ideals promoted by the Enlightenment philosophers of France and England, and the former colonies were indebted to European military leaders, such as the French general Lafayette (1757-1834) and the Polish general Kosciusko (1746-1817), who had

joined the upstarts’ struggle out of a devotion to liberty. American writers of the post-revolutionary period were similarly indebted to Europeans. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), author of what are known as the Leatherstocking Tales about the American frontier, was often called “the American Scott” because his works

seemed to do for American history what Sir Walter Scott’s had done for Scotland’s. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1804-1864) supernatural and symbolic stories about New

England were compared with the works of European gothic and supernatural storytellers such as E. T. A. Hoffmann. Some literary historians would claim that America did not produce a distinctively American literature until Mark Twain published Huckleberry Finn in 1884, and at least one art historian has claimed that American painting did not achieve a uniquely American point of view until the work of Jackson Pollock in the 1930s and 1940s.

Whatever their stylistic indebtedness to European art and literature, however, American artists and writers did possess their own distinctly American subject matter. The physical presence of a frontier of wilderness provided Americans with a unique experience of mystery, beckoning, and challenge not available to European writers and artists, and much of the American art of the nineteenth century is imaginatively caught up in its existence. Also, the Puritan heritage of many early American writers, such as Hawthorne and Herman Melville (1819-1891), found

expression in a biblically based mythology of the new nation. Perhaps the most authentically American voice prior to Mark Twain’s was that of Walt Whitman (p. 845). His Song of Myself announces itself as a poem in the Romantic vein, tak-

ing as its subject the poet himself. It is very different, however, from Wordsworth’s

America: The Colonial Period to Emancipation

autobiographical Romantic epic, The Prelude (written in 1805 but not published until 1850), which was subtitled “Growth of a Poet’s Mind.” In that work,

Wordsworth writes of his personal, subjective experience; in Song of Myself, Whitman makes his personal experience the basis for a celebration of the richness and diversity of America. His song becomes America’s song, and its catalogs of the country’s landscape and people established Whitman’s reputation abroad as “the poet of democracy.” Standing on the Pacific coast, the poet marvelled at the breadth and size of America and at its non-Eurocentric perspective, in which a person could face west and look toward the East. Slavery and Emancipation. The other great struggle in nineteenth-century America was an internal one—the fight against slavery. European travelers to the United States were fond of pointing out the hypocrisy of the institution of slavery ina nation that boasted of its commitment to liberty. Although American opposition to slavery began as an attempt to realize the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the abolition movement also belonged to a worldwide effort. When the French revolutionaries declared the “rights of man,” they encouraged people everywhere to consider the injustice of slavery. ToussaintLouverture, the “black Napoleon” of the French colony of Haiti, where slaves far

outnumbered European colonists, in 1791 led a revolt to free the slaves and secure independence for the island. In the nations liberated by Simon Bolivar in Latin America, new constitutions often included a provision prohibiting slavery. The movements to end slavery in the British colonies and the United States had their first successes in 1807 and 1808, when Britain and the United States stopped participating in the slave trade. Britain abolished slavery in its colonies in 1833; it took a war to prompt President Lincoln, the “Great Emancipator,” to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. The Civil War (1861-65) was fought to abolish slavery,

preserve the Union, and eliminate the feudal agricultural economy of the South that relied upon slavery and was thought to be an impediment to the industrial and economic development of the nation as a whole. Unlike most wars of liberation during the nineteenth century, the Civil War was started by the conservatives, the South. However, the war’s

outcomes— national unity, a free economy, and the

expansion of democracy—were those sought by liberal movements elsewhere.

Literature of Emancipation.

Besides the works of abolitionist authors such as

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), whose Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) is a classic of

the antislavery movement, the literary legacy of slavery lies within the many SLAVE — autobiographical stories telling of the captivity, escape, and ultimate NARRATIVES freedom of slaves—and sorrow songs, or spirituals, produced in the nineteenth

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century. Using imagery that drew on everyday experience as well as the Bible to evoke the slaves’ situation and express the meaning of freedom, these spirituals contain some of the most moving poetry of the century. Among the many American slave narratives, usually published with the aid of Northern abolitionists, are the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) (p. 520), the activist, journalist, and public servant, and Harriet Jacobs (p. 499), who published her narrative under the pen name Linda Brent. JAPAN: THE TOKUGAWA

ERA

The period in Japan from 1603 to 1868 is known as the Tokugawa, or Edo, period, named after its first shogun, or military ruler, and the capital city. Like its European counterparts, Japan in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries enjoyed a period of relative calm after a series of chaotic civil wars among rival daimyo, or feudal lords. Continuing the consolidation of power that had begun in the middle of the sixteenth century, in 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu (r. 1603-1616) instituted a military government, the shogunate, which ruled Japan from the capital city Edo (now Tokyo) for the next two hundred years. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, the emperor was retained as a ceremonial figure, while the shogun and the officials of his central administration, the bakufu, were charged with the actual governance. Promoting neo-Confucianist doctrines that emphasized loyalty, duty, and filial piety, the Tokugawa rulers attempted to maintain a rigidly hierarchical society divided into four distinct groups—warriors (samurai), farmers, artisans, and merchants. Population growth, the rise of the urban middle classes, and the introduction of new trades and professions during this era, however, confounded the fourfold scheme. East-West Relations.

Japan’s direct trade and exchange of ideas with Westerners

began when Portuguese merchants first arrived in 1543. Among other goods, the Europeans introduced gunpowder and firearms to the Japanese. Francis Xavier, a Jesuit missionary, arrived in Japan in 1549 and was followed by priests from other

orders, including Franciscans, who joined in efforts to convert the Japanese to Christianity. By the time of the Tokugawa shogunate there were several hundred thousand Japanese Christians, particularly in the southern islands. Repeating similar mistakes that had been made in China, some of the missionaries, with the backing

of the pope, destroyed Japanese idols and interfered with local politics. In reprisal, Tokugawa ordered the expulsion of all Christian missionaries in 1612. After a failed revolt by Christians on the island of Kyushu in 1637, Christianity was banned altogether and Japan effectively closed its doors to foreign trade. With the exception of some limited trade with Korea and China, after 1641 only the Dutch, under strict

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Population Density in Late Tokugawa Japan In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu instituted a military government, the shogunate, which ruled Japan for the next two hundred years. This period was known as the Tokugawa or Edo period. As this map indicates, one notable change in Japanese society during this time was population growth, especially in the cities. A previously rigid social structure the middle classes — and urban life changed dramatically. gave way to new trades, professions, and classes—

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regulations, exchanged goods with Japan, operating a small trading post in Nagasaki harbor; meanwhile all Japanese were forbidden to travel outside the country. Japan was effectively isolated from the rest of the world for more than two hundred years. Growth of the Urban Middle Classes. The growth of cities and the expansion of commerce and manufacturing exerted a powerful influence on society and the arts in Japan during the Tokugawa period. Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, in particular, grew into thriving commercial centers, where chonin, or artisans and merchants, fos-

tered the growth of a flourishing popular culture. One key concept associated with the social life of chonin during the Tokugawa period is ukiyo, or “floating world.” Alluding to the transitory nature of life, ukiyo came to stand for the entertainments and diversions of the chonin, in particular their activities in the pleasure quarters, or licensed districts —areas of major cities set aside to house prostitutes and courtesans (prostitutes among the well-to-do). Originally enclosed for the purpose of regulating prostitution, pleasure quarters expanded to become cultural and social institutions that in many ways reflected the values of the chonin. Money, above all, was prized in these areas; its acquisition would allow merchants to compete with samurai, who were wealthier and enjoyed more respect. Moreover, women

Torii Kiyotada, Middle Street of the Yoshiwara, c.1740. Hand-Colored Woodblock Print

Many Japanese woodblock prints of the eighteenth century portrayed the “floating world,” the pleasure district in Edo (Tokyo), where the newly affluent bourgeoisie enjoyed the company of courtesans, storytellers, jesters, and other entertainers. (Art Institute of Chicago)

Japan: The Tokugawa Era

in the pleasure quarters achieved a level of independence and respect not possible under the strict doctrines of subordination ushered in by Tokugawa rulers. In the pleasure quarters, men enjoyed the attentions of beautiful and sometimes welleducated courtesans, who observed formal standards of etiquette. This “floating world” of openly sexual relationships regulated by formal rituals of courtship and economic exchange was often in conflict with the world of family and social responsibility. Marriage at the time often had very little to do with romantic love. As among the upper classes in Europe, China, and India, marriages were often arranged by interested parents as a means to preserve or

maintain social standing and economic power, especially among samurai and the wealthiest chonin. While some husbands and wives fell in love with each other, some did not, and a man with sufficient funds to both support his wife and finance a relationship with a courtesan had tacit license to do so. Women, however, were bound by marriage; a married woman who took a lover was subject by law to execution. As can be seen in the plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1742) and the fiction of Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693), complications stemming from a man’s

divided affections at home and in the floating world figures prominently in the writing of the Tokugawa era. Neo-Confucianism. Although BuppuisM and the native Shintoism played a strong role in Japanese religious life, education and social practices in the Tokugawa era were based largely on neo-Confucianist principles. A school of thought associated with the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200) and developed in Japan by Fujiwara Seika (1561-1619) and Hayashi Razan (1583-1657),

NEO-CONFUCIANISM appealed to the ruling shoguns because it suited their aim to promote social stability and hierarchical order. For many members of Japanese society, neo-Confucianism was beneficial because it spread literacy through the classes, and even among women. Unlike most of their European peers, Japanese women studied in public or private schools, but they lost some of their previous rights to inheritance, property, and divorce under the strict Tokugawan rules of subordination. During the Tokugawa era, neo-Confucianism began to reflect a new worldview, one oriented in its “investigation of things’ —a common phrase of the time—to an empirical observation of nature. In a spirit of inquiry very much like that of their contemporaries in Europe, philosophers such as Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714) — whose work is excerpted in the In the World secand Baien Miura (1723-1789)

tion “Enlightenment and the Spirit of Inquiry” —argued that in order to find our place in nature, we need to escape from convention and habit and seek to discover

the principles and laws that govern nature. Kaibara in particular helped to spread

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neo-Confucian ideas widely, writing several treatises addressed to the newly literate classes and to women and children. Thus, the Tokugawa era witnessed a ren-

aissance in philosophical thinking, the development of empirical studies, and the spread of education. The Rise of Popular Literature. Japanese literature and arts flourished during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of the peace and economic stability of the Tokugawa period. Before this time, literature had been written by and for the elite—samurai and nobles. As such, it reflected the beliefs and culture of the upper classes; literature aimed at the common people was designed primarily to proclaim the values of the elite and particularly to reinforce loyalty and piety. Two phenomena of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries began to change all that: the development of printing and the rise of the chonin. By the late sixteenth century, following the example of Jesuits who had used wood and copper type, Japan developed a relatively inexpensive form of woodblock printing. With this new method, various kinds of writing —as well as woodblock prints— could reach a wide audience. And when urban artisans and merchants began to do well in the commercial cities of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, they exerted a tremendous influence on the form and content of literature and the arts. Although mass education did not produce widespread literacy until well into the eighteenth century, in the late seventeenth century chonin demand for entertainment began to affect both drama and fiction. In a portion of the Tokugawa era known as the Genroku period (1688-1704; see Time and Place box, p. 124) writers

such as dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon and fiction writer Ihara Saikaku began writing plays, short stories, and novels that reflected the lives and values of the middle classes. Whereas the courtly No dramas appealed to the elite tastes of samurai and aristocrats, two new forms of drama— KaBukt, or live drama, and JORURI, or puppet theater— increasingly took for their themes the lives of courtesans, bankers, tradesmen, and artisans living in cities. In poetry, too, significant changes took place in the Tokugawa era, particularly in the case of haikai master Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) (p. 122), whose work would

revolutionize Japanese poetry and Japanese taste. Basho’s artistic sensibility evolved from his studies of the Japanese and Chinese classics, but his work is

remarkable for its innovation, especially in the art of haibun, a mixture of linked verse and prose in which Basho describes his sojourns through the countryside to sacred shrines and other places far from the floating world of the cities. In the sixFor more information about the culture and context of Japan from 1650 to 1850, see bedfordstmartins.com/worldlitcompact.

China: The Early Qing Dynasty

teenth century haikai was a popular, satiric form of poetry; Basho made it into a meditative, reflective form of personal expression. CHINA: THE EARLY QING DYNASTY

Like Europe and Japan, China experienced a period of relative peace in the eighteenth century that had been preceded by a time of civil unrest. At the end of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), general dissatisfaction among the people culminated in a revolt led by Li Zicheng (1604-1651), whose rebel army took the capital of Beijing (Peking) in 1644. Seizing the opportunity to intervene and take control of China themselves, the MANcuHU, a people from what is now Manchuria, enlisted the help of some disgruntled Ming generals and set themselves up as rulers in Beijing. By 1683, when Emperor Kangxi (r. 1661-1722) seized Taiwan, Manchu rule had engulfed both north and south China. Thus was born the Qing (Ch’ing) or Manchu dynasty that endured until the October Revolution of 1911.

The Qing Dynasty. After more than fifty years of severe repression at the onset of their reign, the Manchu eased their policies and replaced terror with strategic accommodation. Adopting the Chinese system of bureaucratic government, the Manchu inaugurated a period of peace and prosperity in China. Manchu soldiers, known as Bannermen, enforced Manchu policies and helped stabilize China’s many miles of border while extending its boundaries. The Qing emperors increased trade with Europe and Russia and brokered a system of shared governance that enabled the Manchu to maintain the chief authority while including some Chinese, even

in the highest ranks of government, and benefitting from the administrative expertise of the Chinese intelligentsia. In addition, the Manchu eventually won the favor of small farmers by promoting agriculture and keeping taxes low, at least through the mid-eighteenth century. The Manchu embraced the traditional ConFUCIAN principles of order, revived the Chinese system of civil service examinations, and patronized the arts, letters, and scholarship. Confucianism and Literacy. The Confucian doctrines espoused by Qing emperors emphasized hierarchy, filial piety, and loyalty. Like the so-called enlightened despots of Europe, Kangxi was not only an effective politician and leader but also a cultured individual—an amateur musician, a poet, and a calligrapher who displayed a keen interest in traditional Chinese history and culture. His respect for that culture and his desire to discourage potential dissent led him to push for rote memorization of the Confucian classics and imitation of classical poetic and aesthetic forms. Kangxi and later Manchu emperors promoted a high degree of literacy, some of which trickled down to the larger population. During this time,

33

Leng Mei, Lady

with Attendants in a Garden, Early

Eighteenth Century. Hanging Scroll

(Courtesy of the Museum ofFine Arts, Boston. Reproduced with permission. © 2000 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All Rights Reserved.)

China: The Early Qing Dynasty

along with their training in etiquette, calligraphy, and poetry, some women received at least an introduction to the Confucianist texts, which their brothers and male cousins studied intensively in order to pass the civil service exarminations. The Manchu sponsored a number of extensive writing projects, including the translation of Chinese texts into Manchu, the writing of a detailed history of the Ming dynasty, and the production of a massive illustrated encyclopedia that covered astronomy, mathematics, geography, history, zoology, philosophy, literature, law, politics, and more. But above all these works stood The Complete Collection of Written Materials Divided into Four Categories, completed in 1782 after ten years by a group of 360 scholars and 15,000 copyists; this treatise on and compilation of all known materials in print or manuscript contained nearly 80,000 volumes, grouped into four categories: canonical, historical, philosophical, and literary. While this work was a valuable bibliographical resource, it was also used by Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-96) to censor and destroy any texts that he believed were hostile to the Manchu. East-West Contact. _By the eighteenth century China had had a long, if discontinuous, history of trading with the West. Often that trade was conducted through middlemen— Arabs, Turks, and Mongols—who controlled the lands linking the western Chinese border to the port towns of the Mediterranean. From at least the thirteenth century, expeditions like those of Marco Polo had reached China directly via land routes, and by 1514 the Portuguese had come by sea and set up lim-

ited trade with Canton. The Dutch arrived in 1624, establishing a trading center on the island of Taiwan in 1699. The Chinese did a heavy business wanted only gold or

(then called Formosa), and the English set up trade at Canton strictly regulated the activities of these European traders, who in Chinese silks, porcelain, and tea. In exchange the Chinese silver, for they had no desire for European goods. When the

British emissary Lord Macartney tried to increase Britain’s access to China in 1793,

Emperor Qianlong made clear the Chinese position: “. . . the virtue of the Celestial dynasty having spread far and wide, the kings of myriad nations come by land and sea with all sorts of precious things. Consequently there is nothing we lack, as your principal envoy and others have themselves observed. We have never set much store on strange or ingenious objects, nor do we need any more of your country’s manufactures. . . .” The Chinese were interested, however, in Western science, astronomy, and mathematics, so that scholars such as the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) were not only tolerated but respected. The Jesuits helped the Chinese in cartog-

raphy, translated treatises (for example, Galileo's writings on astronomy), and

improved the design of firearms. These missionaries converted some two to three

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Scholar and Attendant. Porcelain

During the Qing dynasty, scholars were once again revered members ofsociety. People of literary accomplishment were portrayed in art with an air of tranquility and nobility. (Laurie Platt Winfrey)

hundred thousand Chinese to Christianity by the eighteenth century. Dominican and Franciscan missionaries, however, condemned Confucianism and tried to force strict Catholic ritual on already converted Christians. As a result, the Manchu expelled all foreign missionaries in 1742. After 1757, when an imperial decree lim-

ited all foreign trade to Canton, the Qing dynasty, like the neighboring Tokugawa government in Japan, maintained a policy of isolation and exclusion until the British forced China to open its ports to foreigners in the nineteenth century.

China: The Early Qing Dynasty

By the end of the eighteenth century, the expense of maintaining China’s long inland border had begun to sap the imperial budgetary reserves. This led to an increase in taxes on agriculture and peasants, precipitating the White Lotus Rebellion (1796-1804). Although this rebellion was eventually suppressed, the Qing dynasty was beginning to weaken in the face of governmental corruption, overspending, increased population, and, eventually, the aggressive actions of the British that culminated in the Opium War (1839-42). That war opened Chinese ports to the

British and ultimately to large-scale foreign trade. Staving off foreign intervention and struggling with internal problems, the Qing dynasty managed to endure through the nineteenth century, finally collapsing with the October Revolution of 1911, led by followers of Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), founder of the first Chinese

republic and often called the father of modern China. Chinese Literature.

As in Europe and Japan, China during the late Ming (1368-

1644) and early Qing (1644-1911) dynasties witnessed a burgeoning of popular, or vernacular, literature (literature written in the spoken dialect rather than in the clas-

sical literary style), due in part to rising urban populations and the spread of literacy. Those who had previously relied on oral storytellers and classical plays for their entertainment were drawn to literary forms like the short story, the novel, and popular theater. Like their European and Japanese counterparts, Chinese writers moved

toward realistic depictions of everyday life and therefore used a more colloquial style of writing. Some writers also left behind autobiographical writings or “records,” such as Shen Fu’s Six Records of a Floating Life, a touching memoir written in 1809. While drama had always been popular in China and took many forms, ranging from variety plays to musical performances, in the late seventeenth century a new, highly elaborate drama emerged that was aimed primarily at elite, literate audiences. These so-called southern-style Chinese plays, unlike the short, four-act plays of the northern-style, or Yuan, play, sometimes comprised more than fifty scenes. Two of the most important are The Peony Pavilion (Mu-dan ting) by Tang Xian-zu and The Peach Blossom Fan by Kong Shang-ren. Also during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some of China’s greatest novels appeared, including The Journey to the West, also known as Monkey (Xi-you ji, 1592), and above all The Story of the Stone (Shitouji), also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber (Hung lou meng). The Story of the Stone, by Cao Xueqin and Gao E, is considered China’s greatest novel, equivalent to Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1863-69).

Centered on the panoramic view Short fiction stories that came

declining fortunes of the affluent Jia clan, the novel presents a of Chinese society in the early Qing dynasty. also flourished during this time, particularly VERNACULAR FICTION— from folklore and oral traditions. Three writers who devoted their

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lives to collecting and rewriting popular stories and folklore, and in some cases composing new works, were Feng Meng-long (1574-1646), Ling Meng-chu (15741646), and Pu Song-Ling (P’u Sung Ling; 1640-1715) (p. 16). Many of the collected stories are realistic tales of merchants and people living in the cities, though ghost stories and stories about court life were still popular. Pu Song-Ling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liao-zhai zhi-yi, 1766) were written in the classical rather

than vernacular style. They portray everyday life but often contain elements of the supernatural as well. “The Mural,” included in this book (p. 119), emphasizes the fantastic and supernatural aspects of Pu Song-Ling’s fiction. As the Qing dynasty advanced, the morality implicit in Confucianist doctrines was strictly interpreted and enforced. From 1774 to 1794 a literary inquisition took

place under the rule of Qianlong. Early works were censored and many writers were arrested for portraying the Manchus in an unflattering light. Overall more than ten thousand books were prohibited and over two thousand works destroyed. This massive censorship was just one of many signs of the government's weakness in the late eighteenth century, setting the stage for the decline and final collapse of the Qing dynasty over the next century. By the nineteenth century, China was on the verge of a European onslaught that would utterly transform its society. Writers would look back on the late Ming and early Qing periods as one of the greatest cultural and literary eras since the Tang dynasty (618-907), which had basked in the light of poets such as Li Bai (701-762) and Du Fu (712-770). INDIA: THE MUGHAL

EMPIRE

Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, Mongol-Muslim conquerors, known by their Persian name as Mughals, seized parts of northwest India and began to establish an empire that by the seventeenth century encompassed a territory marked by Kabul in the northwest, Surat and Calicut on the Arabian Sea, and Calcutta on the Bay of Bengal. Reaching its apex under the rule of Akbar (r. 1556-1605), the Mughal empire endured through the eighteenth century, until India became tied to imperial Europe, particularly Great Britain. Akbar, “the Great Mughal,” instituted a program of religious tolerance, abolishing the hated poll tax on non-Muslims and allowing some Hindus to serve in court and hold government positions. His policies led to a period of stability, accompanied by a flowering of the arts and architecture. Akbar was succeeded at his death by the relatively ineffective Jahangir (r. 1605-1628) and then by Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658), whose skills at expanding the empire were matched by his

For more information about the culture and context of China and India from 1650 to 1850, see bedfordstmartins.com/worldlitcompact.

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Mughal India, 1707

In the beginning of the eighteenth century, much ofIndia was united under the Mughals, a group ofMongolMuslim rulers who had descended from the north. India flourished under Mughal rule, its splendor rivaled only by the Ottoman and Chinese empires. The Taj Mahal was constructed under Mughal rulers, and many provinces of India were unified for the first time.

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ineptitude in domestic politics. Building the Taj Mahal, in Agra, and carrying out the emperor’s imperial campaigns almost bankrupted the government, which taxed agriculture heavily to recuperate its losses. But the beginning of the end of the Mughal empire may be laid at the feet of Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707), who alienated non-Muslims by reversing Akbar’s policies of religious tolerance, restoring the poll tax on Hindus, and prohibiting the building of Hindu temples. Enacted at a time when Europeans had already made inroads along the empire’s coasts, Aurangzeb’s restrictive policies as well as exorbitant taxes led to civil unrest and finally to revolts, which the British would manipulate to their advantage.

Revolt and Unrest. In the eighteenth century, the Mughal empire was in decline, struggling to cope with opposition from within its own borders and threats from Europe and Persia. Already in the late seventeenth century, Hindu peasants in the Punjab and Mathura had begun to rebel; the Mughals had also faced military opposition from a Hindu force led by Shivaji Bhonsle (1627-1680), of Maharashtra, as well as from the Sikh khalsa, or “army of the pure,” led by guru Gobind Rai (1666-1708). While Shivaji was eventually defeated by Aurangzeb’s armies, internal opposition grew and many local rulers began to reassert their autonomy at the end of Aurangzeb’s reign. Taking advantage of the political chaos, Persians under the leadership of Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739, killing more

than thirty thousand people and absconding with more than $200 million worth of gold and jewels and the fabled peacock throne of Shah Jahan. At this time, too, the British, who had first arrived at Surat in 1608, expanded their administrative

control over India. The British in India. When the British first reached Surat in 1608, Emperor Jahangir, advised by Portuguese ambassadors who were protecting their own interests in India, had them expelled. Persistent in their efforts, however, the British successfully negotiated a treaty in 1613 that allowed them to establish a textile factory at Surat by 1619. By the end of the century, several British factories were operating in India, and the British had established Fort St. George, at Madras, and Fort William,

in what is now Calcutta. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the British had edged out rival Dutch and French competitors, paving the way for the further expansion of their interests. When the armed forces of the British East India Com-

pany, led by Sir Robert Clive, defeated the nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the British established firm control over Bengal. This turning point secured the future of British imperial power and led the way to British expansion and absolute control over India in the next several decades. Many Indians entered into the service of the British and some, such as Abu Taleb (1752-1806), an Indian

India: The Mughal Empire

Lady Elijah Impey, Wife of the Chief Justice of Bengal, 1782

This painting shows an eighteenth-century British drawing room in colonial India, filled with Indians tending to the wife ofaBritish ruler. (The Art Archive)

Muslim from Oudh, traveled to the British Isles. Abu Taleb’s Travels, excerpted in this book (p. 179), records his impressions of British society. In the nineteenth century the British would consolidate and extend their power in India, gaining control of the whole Indian subcontinent through a series of colonial wars and through taking advantage of the divisions in the region after the collapse of the Mughal empire. During the first half of the century the British were occupied with expelling the French from southern India, challenging the Russians on the northern borders and in Afghanistan, defeating the Hinpu Marathi forces in central and northern India, and pushing out from their central power base in Bengal to take over neighboring states and prevent incursions over the borders. Until the 1830s, the British had taken largely an economic and legal interest in India and made little attempt to impose European culture on the Indian people. With the growing influence of evangelical Christians in the British government after passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, however, missionaries were sent to India and English was declared the medium of instruction in many Indian schools. Along with the English language a new curriculum including English literature, philosophy, and political and social theory was adopted for Indian schools. While

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many Indians welcomed the opportunity to study and gain access to Western ideas and science, the imposition of Western culture also sparked resistance. The second half of the century saw a revival of interest in Hinduism, protests against the excesses of British colonialism, and the beginnings of an independence movement. The Sepoy Rebellion. Symbolically, the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-58, in India often called the First War of Independence, was the century’s defining event in Indian-British relations. The Sepoys, native troops in the British army, had over the years protested several times against their treatment by British officers. When some of their perquisites were cut and they were no longer exempted from foreign service—an assignment that violated some caste rules—the Sepoys were angered. Ordered to bite off the ends of cartridges that were lubricated with a mixture of cow and pig fat—offensive to both Hindus and Muslims—they took up arms. In a series of rebellions at Delhi, Lucknow, Peshawar, and several other sites across northern and central India, the Sepoys challenged the British. The disturbances lasted over a year, from May 1857 until July 1858. Although the military revolt never expanded into a broader national movement, the soldiers had considerable sympathy and covert support from conservative landowners and religious leaders who were distrustful of Westernization. After a successful military campaign to put down the rebellion, the British pulled back from the liberalizing measures they had instituted before the uprising. They abandoned their attempts to abolish suttee (the ritual burning of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres), infanticide of unwanted daughters, and the traditional ban on widows remarrying. Traditional factions of Indian society who resisted Westernization were placated. The British also abolished the British East India Company, which had administered the colony for the British, and placed India under the direct rule of the crown. They reorganized the army, increasing the percentage of European troops and providing some opportunities for Indian troops to be promoted into positions of limited authority. They also opened up positions in the colonial administration to Indians and established a policy of limited consultation with them on political and legislative issues. These measures pleased the Westernized middle class, who had been disappointed by the British decision to abandon reform of the caste system and the marriage laws.

Indian Literature.

As was its religion, India’s arts and literature during the

Mughal period involved a rich mixture of Islamic, Persian, and Hindu influences.

Mughal painting, which flourished under the patronage of Akbar, for example, combines Persian and Indian elements. Indian painters even adapted the halo from European images of saints and reinterpreted it in portraits of their emperors.

India: The Mughal Empire

Indian Procession

This painting illustrates the prominence of the gods in eighteenth-century Indian life. (Courtesy of the British Musuem)

The architecture of the time, one of the greatest achievements of the Mughal empire, reflects this multicultural synthesis. The most outstanding example is the Taj Mahal. Built under the reign of Shah Jahan as a tribute to the memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, this spectacular mausoleum, one of the world’s most beau-

tiful buildings, was designed by Persian architects and built by Indian craftsmen and laborers; it incorporates Byzantine, Persian, and Hindu elements. One key force in Indian literature during the Mughal period was the revival of devotional literature, or bhakti, which played a role in India’s maintaining a distinctively Indian identity. Bhakti was also a movement, and like the Protestant revolt against Catholicism in Europe it emphasized a personal devotion and an ecstatic union with God and was in part directed against the more rigid orthodoxy of Hinduism and its priests. While some members of the lower castes in the Mughal era turned to Islam to escape the rigid hierarchy of Hinduism, others turned to Bhakti, which spread throughout India from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Bhakti poets wrote in the vernacular languages rather than Sanskrit, the language of Hindu classics. Poets such as Nanak (1469-1538), the founder of the Sikhs, and Tulsidas (1532-1623), the author of the great retelling

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of the story of Rama, Ramcaritmanas, wrote in Hindi; Jnanesvar (1275-1296), the author of commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, wrote in Marathi; and Ramprasad

Sen (1718-1775) wrote in Bengali (see p. 438). Bhakti writers composed hymns of

praise to the god Vishnu and, less often, the god Shiva as well as to the Mother Goddess and Shiva’s consort, or spouse, Shakti. These hymns were meant to be sung in a kind of dance performance known as kirtan, whereby a worshiper would experience an immediate communion with God. Hence these hymns typically display a passionate intensity and employ the language of love— emotional and sexual—to express the devotee’s relation to the god or goddess, as in the poems of Ramprasad, whose work is excerpted here. A Bengali poet and Bhakti devotee of the fearsome goddess Kali, Ramprasad represents the culmination of the Bhakti tradition. Among the greatest of the early or mid-nineteenth century poets was Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan, known as Ghalib (1797-1869). Writing in Urdu, a language close to Hindi, which contains elements of Persian and Arabic, Ghalib draws upon Persian literary forms, particularly the qasidah, poems of praise, like the western ode, and the ghazal, a rhymed lyric of three to seven couplets that may be compared to the sonnet. Living in Delhi and serving in the court of King Bahadur Shah Zafar, a rival poet, Ghalib witnessed the atrocities of the Sepoy Rebellion firsthand, and he condemned both sides for their lack of humanity and for turning the city of Delhi into a sea of blood. Reflecting in part on his disillusionment with the world around him, Ghalib’s poetry often alludes elliptically to his personal experience with the conflict in his country and is characterized by an intense sense of longing and desire, ironically undercut by a sense of the impossibility of fruition. One of the nineteenth century’s finest lyric poets, Ghalib is revered in northern India as the great master of the ghazal. Ghalib’s poetry responds to the turmoil of India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as the Mughal empire was being drawn apart from internal conflicts, exacerbated, of course, by the increasingly tight British administrative and military grip of many parts of the country. Through British colonial schools, western literature and literary forms spread throughout the country, leading to some assimilation of western forms, as well as reactions against this ideological or cultural incursion upon native traditions. Nonetheless, Sanskrit literature, as well as Arabic and Persian literature, also exerted considerable influence upon Indian

writers — particularly Islamic writers— giving rise to a variety of hybridized works that anticipates the writing of later nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indian literature.

Qw

JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN MOLIERE B. FRANCE, 1622-1673

The seventeenth century was a celebrated period in French drama that included the works of dramatists Corneille, Racine,' and Moliére; it was comparable to the Elizabethan Age in England, which had Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare.’ It was a time in France when the theater matured, with professional touring companies and public theaters, even though the actor’s lifestyle was condemned by the clergy. The search by mathematicians for regularity in the cosmos was mirrored by the desire of kings and rulers for order and harmony. Artists, in turn, adopted orderly, NEoc.assicaL standards for artistic expression and developed rules for judging works of art. The absolute standard for elegance and decorum in all phases of life was France’s King Louis XIV;° his palace at Versailles and Paris itself became centers of culture similar to Rome under the Caesars. The court became the model for the upper classes, who sought to distance themselves from the lower classes and anything that could be considered vulgar. The possessions and behavior that distinguished the upper crust in the seventeenth century were essentially the same as those seen today: fine clothes and elegant manners, training in foreign languages, and a refined taste for art, food, and music. Moliére contributed to the new social order by writing “comedies of manners”: plays that deal with the social conventions of gentlemen and gentlewomen in a sophisticated age. The slavish imitation of contemporary fashions by the middle class also became a handy target for comedy and satire. We still use the words fop and dandy—taken from seventeenth-century drama—to describe the individual whose vanity yields to excesses. While to all appearances, science was making astonishing strides in discovering and describing a rational universe, human society, for all its hopes and pretensions, seemed to lag behind. It was easier to formulate a new law of physics than to eradicate a basic fault of human nature, such as greed. Moliére used the full resources of French theater to expose the gap between the ideal and the real by creating comedies that poked fun at hypocrisy, greed, affectation, zealotry, and immoderation. Despite the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church on seventeenth-century France, Moliére’s plays are not concerned with the religious implications

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliére, Seventeenth Century. Watercolor

Moliére as a young man. (Giraudon / Art Resource, N.Y.)

moh-LYEHR

is some1 Corneille, Racine: The French dramatist Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) is known for his tragedies. It

thetimes said that the production of his El Cid in 1636 was the beginning of the Neoclassical period of French ater. Jean Racine (1639-1699) became famous for plays such as Phaedra (1677).

Marlowe (1564— 2 Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare: The life of the promising playwright Christopher

masterpieces of satiric com1593) was sadly cut short in a tavern brawl. Ben Jonson (1572-1637) wrote several most famous dramatist, England’s is (1564-1616) Shakespeare William (1610). Alchemist The edy, including

known for both comedies and tragedies. in France, from 1643 to 1715, 3 Louis XIV: Called the Sun King, Louis XIV reigned for an unusually long period

and set the standards for political and social behavior.

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46

JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN

MOLIERE

of imperfection but rather with the social consequences of immoderation and poor taste, when individuals fail to comply with the ideals of fairness, reasonableness, and common sense. The Son of the Court Upholsterer. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was in line to inherit his father’s position as tapissier ordinaire du roi, the king’s upholsterer, and enjoy a comfortable life. He received a fine education at College de Clermont, a Jesuit college, and practiced law for a short time. In 1643 he drastically changed careers by becoming one of nine founders of an acting company in Paris, the IIlustre Théatre. Taking the stage name of Moliére for the first time, he devoted the rest of his life to theater— writing, directing, staging, and producing plays. Although theater was popular with the general public, the acting profession itself was condemned by the clergy; in fact, an actor was automatically excommunicated by the church and denied Christian burial unless a renunciation of his chosen career was forthcoming before death. Moliére’s new company was a total failure, at least financially; twice the playwright ended up in jail for debts. As a result, he retreated to the countryside where he learned the organizational nuts and bolts of successful theater by touring the back roads and provinces of France. For thirteen years he served an apprenticeship in the various practical and artistic responsibilities of a theatrical company. He also turned his attention from tragedies to comedies — his true calling. In 1658 Moliére returned to Paris, found favor with the court through Louis XIV’s brother, “Monsieur,” and had an indisputable hit with The High-Brow Young Ladies (Les précieuses ridicules, 1659). From

then on he enjoyed huge success and the patronage of the king. The titles of his masterpieces constitute a list of the kinds of people he subjected to satire and ridicule. School for Wives (Lecole des femmes, 1662) examines the insecurities of courtship. Don Juan (1665) picks up the theme of the playboy and explores intimate relationships. The Misanthrope (1666) exposes the shortsightedness of a self-righteous intellectual. The Miser (L’avare, 1668), as the title gives away, satirizes lust for money. The WouldBe Gentleman (Le bourgeois gentilhomme, 1670) turns on the aspiring middle classes, and The Learned Ladies (Les femmes savantes, 1672) attacks Moliére is so great

that he astonishes us

afresh every time we read him. Heisa man apart; his plays border on the tragic, and no one has the courage to try and imitate him. —AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE,

critic, 1914

educated women. In his last play, The Hypochondriac, (Le malade imaginaire, 1673), Moliére depicts a hypochondriac at the mercy of the medical profession, a subject that grew out of his personal experiences during the last years of his life. Moliére weathered the uncertainties of live theater and the maintenance of an acting company by writing a large number of plays. One of his editors, René Bray, estimates that in a fourteen-year period, 1660-73, Moliére wrote thirty-one plays. In all, his company performed ninety-three Moliére plays. Moliére died in 1673, a few hours after having acted the title role in

The Hypochondriac. Priests were not allowed to bring the last rites to him, so Moliére did not have the opportunity to renounce his profession. He was denied a Christian burial until his widow and friends persuaded the king to intervene with the archbishop. Only then was one of France’s

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliére, 1622-1673

greatest playwrights buried, after dark, in the Saint-Joseph Cemetery on February 21. One can only wonder how Moliére would have staged such a convoluted scenario. Moliére understood the potential role of theater in the transformation of society. In the preface to Tartuffe, he explains why he chose religious hypocrisy for ridicule in that play and why the instrument of satire is so effective: If the function of comedy is to correct men’s vices, I do not see why any should be exempt. Such a condition in our society would be much more dangerous than the thing itself; and we have seen that the theater is admirably suited to provide correction. The most forceful lines of a serious moral statement are usually less powerful than those of satire; and nothing will reform most men better than the depiction of their faults. It is a vigorous blow to vices to expose them to public laughter.

47

Moliére said that comedy should “correct men’s

errors in the course of amusing them.” This marks him as a satirist, one of

that ancient breed who use art forms and public forums to attack correctable human faults with

the lance of ridicule. —David RICHARD

The Elements of Comedy. The first version of Tartuffe—the first three acts —was performed on May 12, 1664. The archbishop of Paris, Queen Mother Anne of Austria, and the Company of the Blessed Sacrament protested the play to Louis XIV; the play was banned, and Moliére was censured. The extreme religious climate of the times is reflected by Pierre

JONES

Roulé, vicar of St. Barthémy, who wrote that Moliére was a “demon

in flesh” and “should be burned at the stake as a foretaste of the fires of hell... ” The play was rewritten and performed on August 5, 1667, at the Palais-Royal. The president of Parliament brought in the police, and the play was stopped. The archbishop of Paris denounced this version from the pulpit and threatened spectators with excommunication. Although Moliére petitioned Louis XIV for relief, the king had to steer politically between the religious zealots and Moliére and his sympathizers. The third version of the play, the version we have today, was finally produced in 1669.

Moliére’s comedy relies upon stock characters, character types that appeared in other plays of the period: the foolish father who is an obstacle to his child’s love life; the clever or impudent servant who interjects her witty opinions; the old lady with amusing eccentricities; the virtuous wife. The stock ending for a comedy is the happy marriage, which symbolizes the restoration of order to a society previously threatened by disorder. Moliére uses a single character, Tartuffe, to embody the vice he wishes to ridicule—hypocrisy. The satire, as well as the humor, resides in the difference between appearance and reality, between the mask worn by Tartuffe and the man behind the mask. Tartuffe’s manipulation of other characters in the play while wearing a mask represents a threat to society. The ultimate goal of the play itself is the unmasking of Tartuffe. The character Tartuffe is a pious hypocrite who weasels his way into the household of a rather shallow, naive man named Orgon. Using reli-

gious flattery, Tartuffe eventually persuades Orgon to give him his daughter’s hand, while making passes at Orgon’s wife. The play becomes even more complicated and potentially damaging when Tartuffe replaces Orgon’s son as the inheritor of Orgon’s estate. Incredible as it seems, the

Rit

For links to

more information about Moliére, a

quiz on Tartuffe, and information about the 2Ist-century relevance of Tartuffe, see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

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JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN

klay-AHNT,

MOLIERE

church actually did place moral arbiters in people’s homes to reform a family’s practices, so Moliére was cutting close to reality with his drama. Although Orgon seems decent enough, he is gullible and incapable of getting beneath the false masks worn by Tartuffe. One of the persistent themes in this play is how private life with its passions and ambiguities can conflict with an orderly code of behavior in the public sphere. Marriage is a convenient arrangement for showing the discrepancies between public gestures and private needs, especially with the explosive power of sexuality. Although the women in the play clearly reveal the subordinate roles of women in French society of the time, two of them nevertheless have strong, intelligent roles to play. The servant Dorine not only provides humor with her outrageous tongue, she often articulates a sensible explanation for activities in the play. Orgon’s wife, Elmire, is clever enough to ensnare Tartuffe in his own lust. Underneath the laughter and wit in Tartuffe there is a persistent faith in common sense and the individual; with the unmasking of human foibles comes the person who, regardless of social rank, is able to sort out the excesses of human nature and pursue a path of moderation and caring companionship. It is Orgon’s brother-in-law, Cléante, who consistently shows a common-sense point of view and an ethic of moderation; his rational commentaries reflect an ENLIGHTENMENT perspective, tying Moliére to the conventional wisdom of his time: Ah, Brother, man’s a strangely fashioned creature Who seldom is content to follow Nature, But recklessly pursues his inclination Beyond the narrow bounds of moderation, And often, by transgressing Reason’s laws, Perverts a lofty aim or noble cause.

vah-LEHR

Early in the play, Orgon is incapable of appreciating the good sense behind Cléante’s words, but through sad experiences and the timely intervention of the king at the end of the play, Orgon triumphs, and his daughter is promised to the appropriate suitor. Although the conclusion of the play indirectly raises questions about the patriarchal system that made Tartuffe’s escapades possible, Orgon will “give Valére, whose love has proven so true, / The wedded happiness which is his due.” Certainly the best ending for a comedy. The attack on religious hypocrisy in Tartuffe (1664) ruffled the feathers of both clergy and laity, especially a secret society of Christian extremists called the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, a lay group whose task was to report private sins of the family to public authorities. The play was banned from public view by the king. In defending his play, Molieére attributed the censorship to the very hypocrites he was satirizing and commented on them in the preface to the play’s first printed edition (1669).

This is a comedy about which a great deal of fuss has been made, and it has long been persecuted. The people it makes fun of have certainly shown [by keeping his play off the stage for nearly five

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliére, 1622-1673

years] that they command more influence in France than any of those I have been concerned with before. Noblemen, pretentious women, cuckolds, and doctors have all submitted to being put on the stage and pretended to be as amused as everyone else at the way I portrayed them, but the hypocrites would not stand for a joke. . ..

Moliére’s defense is not completely without holes since there were those who felt that his attacks on excessive or false piety might also blemish the reputations of the truly pious. After rewriting the play twice in response to criticism, Moliére’s third version of the play met with great success. @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography Mantzius, Karl. Moliére. 1908.

Scott, Virginia. Moliére: A Theatrical Life. 2000. Walker, Hallam. Moliére. i990. Historical Background

-

Knutson, Harold C. The Triumph ofWit. 1988. Criticism

Gossman, Lionel. Men and Masks: A Study of Moliére. 1963.

Hubert,J.D. Moliére and the Company ofIntellect. 1962. Lewis, D. B. Wyndham. Moliére: The Comic Mask. 1959. Mander, Gertrude. Moliére. 1973.

m@ PRONUNCIATION

Cléante: klay-AHNT Damis: dah-MEES Flipote: flee-POTE Moliére: moh-LYEHR Valére: vah-LEHR

49

POQUELIN

MOLIERE

nn

JEAN-BAPTISTE

sere

50

Se! ye.

Jean Mic hel le Jeune Moreau, Scene from Mo liére’s Tartuffe

This scene illustrates the surreptitious behavior featured in Tartuffe. (Snark / Art Resource, N.Y.)

ans

Tartuffe, Act I, Scene 1

Cw

Tartuffe Translated by Richard Wilbur

MME. PERNELLE, Orgon’s mother

CLEANTE, Orgon’s brother-in-law

ORGON, Elmire’s husband

TARTUFFE, a hypocrite

ELMIRE, Orgon’s wife DAMIS, Orgon’s son, Elmire’s stepson MARIANE, Orgon’s daughter, Elmire’s stepdaughter, in love with Valére

DORINE, Mariane’s lady’s-maid M. LOYAL, a bailiff A POLICE OFFICER FLIPOTE, Mme. Pernelle’s maid

FJ

Z

VALERE, in love with Mariane

THE SCENE THROUGHOUT: ORGON’S house in paris

Act I Scene 1

MADAME PERNELLE: Come, come, Flipote; it’s time I left this place. ELMIRE: I can’t keep up, you walk at such a pace. MADAME PERNELLE: Don’t trouble, child; no need to show me out.

It’s not your manners I’m concerned about.

ELMIRE: We merely pay you the respect we owe. But, Mother, why this hurry? Must you go?

MADAME PERNELLE: I must. This house appalls me. No one in it Will pay attention for a single minute. Children, I take my leave much vexed in spirit. I offer good advice, but you won't hear it.

You all break in and chatter on and on. It’s like a madhouse with the keeper gone. DORINE: ete. MADAME PERNELLE: Girl, you talk too much, and I’m afraid

You're far too saucy for a lady’s-maid. You push in everywhere and have your say. DAMIS: Bota

MADAME PERNELLE: You, boy, grow more foolish every day. To think my grandson should be such a dunce!

,

A

51

52

JEAN-BAPTISTE

20

POQUELIN

MOLIERE

Pve said a hundred times, if I’ve said it once, That if you keep the course on which you've started, You'll leave your worthy father broken-hearted. MARIANE:

ethan kee MADAME

PERNELLE:

And you, his sister, seem so pure, So shy, so innocent, and so demure.

But you know what they say about still waters. I pity parents with secretive daughters. ELMIRE:

Now, Mother... MADAME

PERNELLE:

And as for you, child, let me add That your behavior is extremely bad,

And a poor example for these children, too. Their dear, dead mother did far better than you. Youre much too free with money, and I’m distressed 30

To see you so elaborately dressed. When it’s one’s husband that one aims to please,

One has no need of costly fripperies. CLEANTE: Oh, Madame, really... MADAME

PERNELLE:

You are her brother, Sir, And I respect and love you; yet if I were My son, this lady’s good and pious spouse, I wouldn’t make you welcome in my house. You're full of worldly counsels which, I fear,

40

Aren't suitable for decent folk to hear. Ive spoken bluntly, Sir; but it behooves us Not to mince words when righteous fervor moves us. DAMIS:

Your man Tartuffe is full of holy speeches... MADAME

PERNELLE:

And practises precisely what he preaches. He’s a fine man, and should be listened to. I will not hear him mocked by fools like you. DAMIS:

Good God! Do you expect me to submit To the tyranny of that carping hypocrite? Must we forgo all joys and satisfactions Because that bigot censures all our actions? DORINE:

To hear him talk—and he talks all the time—

Tartuffe, Act 1, Scene 1 50

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There’s nothing one can do that’s not a crime. He rails at everything, your dear Tartuffe. MADAME PERNELLE: Whatever he reproves deserves reproof. He’s out to save your souls, and all of you Must love him, as my son would have you do. DAMIS: Ah no, Grandmother, I could never take To such a rascal, even for my father’s sake. That’s how I feel, and I shall not dissemble. His every action makes me seethe and tremble With helpless anger, and I have no doubt That he and I will shortly have it out. DORINE: Surely it is a shame and a disgrace To see this man usurp the master’s place— To see this beggar who, when first he came, Had not a shoe or shoestring to his name So far forget himself that he behaves As if the house were his, and we his slaves. MADAME PERNELLE: Well, mark my words, your souls would fare far better If you obeyed his precepts to the letter. DORINE: You see him as a saint. I’m far less awed;

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In fact, I see right through him. He’s a fraud. MADAME PERNELLE: Nonsense.

DORINE: His man Laurent’s the same, or worse;

Id not trust either with a penny purse. MADAME PERNELLE: I can’t say what his servant’s morals may be; His own great goodness I can guarantee.

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You all regard him with distaste and fear Because he tells you what youre loath to hear, Condemns your sins, points out your moral flaws, And humbly strives to further Heaven’s cause. DORINE: If sin is all that bothers him, why is it He’s so upset when folk drop in to visit? Is Heaven so outraged by a social call That he must prophesy against us all? Pll tell you what I think: if you ask me,

He’s jealous of my mistress’ company.

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MADAME PERNELLE:

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Rubbish! [to eELm1re] He’s not alone, child, in complaining Of all your promiscuous entertaining. Why, the whole neighborhood’s upset, I know, By all these carriages that come and go, With crowds of guests parading in and out And noisy servants loitering about. In all of this, ’m sure there’s nothing vicious;

But why give people cause to be suspicious? CLEANTE: They need no cause; they'll talk in any case. Madam, this world would be a joyless place If, fearing what malicious tongues might say, We locked our doors and turned our friends away. And even if one did so dreary a thing, D’you think those tongues would cease their chattering? One can’t fight slander; it’s a losing battle; 100 Let us instead ignore their tittle-tattle. Let’s strive to live by conscience’s clear decrees, And let the gossips gossip as they please.

DORINE: If there is talk against us, I know the source:

It’s Daphne and her little husband, of course. Those who have greatest cause for guilt and shame Are quickest to besmirch a neighbor’s name. When there’s a chance for libel, they never miss it; When something can be made to seem illicit They’re off at once to spread the joyous news, 110 Adding to fact what fantasies they choose. By talking up their neighbor’s indiscretions They seek to camouflage their own transgressions, Hoping that others’ innocent affairs Will lend a hue of innocence to theirs, Or that their own black guilt will come to seem Part of a general shady color-scheme. MADAME PERNELLE: All that is quite irrelevant. I doubt That anyone’s more virtuous and devout Than dear Orante; and I’m informed that she 120 Condemns your mode of life most vehemently. DORINE: Oh, yes, she’s strict, devout, and has no taint

Of worldliness; in short, she seems a saint. But it was time which taught her that disguise; She’s thus because she can’t be otherwise.

Tartuffe, Act I, Scene 1

So long as her attractions could enthrall,

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She flounced and flirted and enjoyed it all, But now that they’re no longer what they were She quits a world which fast is quitting her, And wears a veil of virtue to conceal Her bankrupt beauty and her lost appeal. That’s what becomes of old coquettes today: Distressed when all their lovers fall away, They see no recourse but to play the prude, And so confer a style on solitude. Thereafter, they're severe with everyone, Condemning all our actions, pardoning none, And claiming to be pure, austere, and zealous When, if the truth were known, they’re merely jealous, And cannot bear to see another know The pleasures time has forced them to forgo. MADAME PERNELLE [initially to ELMIRE]: That sort of talk is what you like to hear,

Therefore youd have us all keep still, my dear, While Madam rattles on the livelong day. Nevertheless, I mean to have my say. I tell you that you're blest to have Tartuffe Dwelling, as my son’s guest, beneath this roof;

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That Heaven has sent him to forestall its wrath By leading you, once more, to the true path; That all he reprehends is reprehensible, And that youd better heed him, and be sensible. These visits, balls, and parties in which you revel

Are nothing but inventions of the Devil. One never hears a word that’s edifying: Nothing but chaff and foolishness and lying, As well as vicious gossip in which one’s neighbor Is cut to bits with epee, foil, and saber. People of sense are driven half-insane At such affairs, where noise and folly reign 160

And reputations perish thick and fast. As a wise preacher said on Sunday last, Parties are Towers of Babylon, because The guests all babble on with never a pause; And then he told a story which, I think...

[To cLEANTE] I heard that laugh, Sir, and I saw that wink!

Go find your silly friends and laugh some more! Enough; I’m going; don’t show me to the door. I leave this household much dismayed and vexed; I cannot say when I shall see you next.

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[Slapping FL1poTE] Wake up, don’t stand there gaping into space! I'll slap some sense into that stupid face. Move, move, you slut. Scene 2

CLEANTE:

I think I'll stay behind; I want no further pieces of her mind. How that old lady... DORINE: Oh, what wouldn’t she say

If she could hear you speak of her that way! She'd thank you for the lady, but ’'m sure She’d find the old a little premature. CLEANTE:

My, what a scene she made, and what a din! And how this man Tartuffe has taken her in! DORINE: Yes, but her son is even worse deceived;

His folly must be seen to be believed. In the late troubles, he played an able part And served his king with wise and loyal heart, But he’s quite lost his senses since he fell Beneath Tartuffe’s infatuating spell. He calls him brother, and loves him as his life, Preferring him to mother, child, or wife. In him and him alone will he confide; He’s made him his confessor and his guide; 20

He pets and pampers him with love more tender Than any pretty mistress could engender, Gives him the place of honor when they dine, Delights to see him gorging like a swine, Stuffs him with dainties till his guts distend, And when he belches, cries “God bless you, friend!” In short, he’s mad; he worships him; he dotes;

His deeds he marvels at, his words he quotes, Thinking each act a miracle, each word Oracular as those that Moses heard. Tartuffe, much pleased to find so easy a victim, 30

Has in a hundred ways beguiled and tricked him,

Milked him of money, and with his permission Established here a sort of Inquisition. Even Laurent, his lackey, dares to give Us arrogant advice on how to live;

He sermonizes us in thundering tones

Tartuffe, Act I, Scene 4

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And confiscates our ribbons and colognes. Last week he tore a kerchief into pieces Because he found it pressed in a Life ofJesus: He said it was a sin. to juxtapose Unholy vanities and holy prose. Scene 3

ELMIRE [to CLEANTE]:

You did well not to follow; she stood in the door And said verbatim all she’d said before. I saw my husband coming. I think Id best Go upstairs now, and take a little rest.

CLEANTE: I'll wait and greet him here; then I must go.

I’ve really only time to say hello. DAMIS: Sound him about my sister’s wedding, please. I think Tartuffe’s against it, and that he’s Been urging Father to withdraw his blessing. As you well know, [d find that most distressing. Unless my sister and Valere can marry,

My hopes to wed his sister will miscarry, And I’m determined... DORINE:

He’s coming. Scene 4 ORGON: Ah, Brother, good-day. CLEANTE:

Well, welcome back. I’m sorry I can’t stay. How was the country? Blooming, I trust, and green? ORGON: Excuse me, Brother; just one moment. Dorine .. . [To DORINE]

10

[To cLEANTE] To put my mind at rest, I always learn The household news the moment I return. [To poRINE] Has all been well, these two days I’ve been gone? How are the family? What’s been going on? DORINE: Your wife, two days ago, had a bad fever, And a fierce headache which refused to leave her. ORGON: Ah. And Tartuffe?

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DORINE:

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Tartuffe? Why, he’s round and red, Bursting with health, and excellently fed. ORGON: Poor fellow! DORINE: That night, the mistress was unable To take a single bite at the dinner-table. Her headache-pains, she said, were simply hellish. ORGON: Ah. And Tartuffe? DORINE: He ate his meal with relish, And zealously devoured in her presence A leg of mutton and a brace of pheasants. ORGON: Poor fellow! DORINE: Well, the pains continued strong, And so she tossed and tossed the whole night long, Now icy-cold, now burning like a flame. We sat beside her bed till morning came. ORGON: Ah. And Tartuffe? DORINE: Why, having eaten, he rose And sought his room, already in a doze, Got into his warm bed, and snored away In perfect peace until the break of day. ORGON: Poor fellow! DORINE: After much ado, we talked her Into dispatching someone for the doctor. He bled her, and the fever quickly fell. ORGON: Ah. And Tartuffe? DORINE: He bore it very well. To keep his cheerfulness at any cost, And make up for the blood Madame had lost, He drank, at lunch, four beakers full of port.

ORGON: Poor fellow!

Tartuffe, Act I, Scene 5

DORINE:

Both are doing well, in short. Pll go and tell Madame that you’ve expressed Keen sympathy and_anxious interest. Scene5 CLEANTE:

That girl was laughing in your face, and though I’ve no wish to offend you, even so I’m bound to say that she had some excuse. How can you possibly be such a goose? Are you so dazed by this man’s hocus-pocus That all the world, save him, is out of focus? You've given him clothing, shelter, food, and care;

Why must you also... ORGON:

Brother, stop right there. You do not know the man of whom you speak. CLEANTE:

I grant you that. But my judgment’s not so weak That I can’t tell, by his effect on others...

10

ORGON:

Ah, when you meet him, you two will be like brothers! There’s been no loftier soul since time began. He is a man who...a man who... an excellent man. To keep his precepts is to be reborn, And view this dunghill of a world with scorn. Yes, thanks to him I’m a changed man indeed. Under his tutelage my soul’s been freed From earthly loves, and every human tie: My mother, children, brother, and wife could die,

20

And Yd not feel a single moment’s pain. CLEANTE:

That’s a fine sentiment, Brother; most humane. ORGON:

Oh, had you seen Tartuffe as I first knew him,

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Your heart, like mine, would have surrendered to him. He used to come into our church each day And humbly kneel nearby, and start to pray. He’d draw the eyes of everybody there By the deep fervor of his heartfelt prayer; He’d sigh and weep, and sometimes with a sound Of rapture he would bend and kiss the ground; And when I rose to go, he’d run before

Sy)

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To offer me holy-water at the door. His serving-man, no less devout than he, Informed me of his master’s poverty; I gave him gifts, but in his humbleness He'd beg me every time to give him less. “Oh, that’s too much,” he’d cry, “too much by twice! I don’t deserve it. The half, Sir, would suffice.” And when I wouldn’t take it back, he’d share 40 Half of it with the poor, right then and there. At length, Heaven prompted me to take him in To dwell with us, and free our souls from sin. He guides our lives, and to protect my honor Stays by my wife, and keeps an eye upon her; He tells me whom she sees, and all she does, And seems more jealous than I ever was! And how austere he is! Why, he can detect A mortal sin where you would least suspect; In smallest trifles, he’s extremely strict. 50 Last week, his conscience was severely pricked Because, while praying, he had caught a flea And killed it, so he felt, too wrathfully. CLEANTE: Good God, man! Have you lost your common sense— Or is this all some joke at my expense? How can you stand there and in all sobriety... ORGON: Brother, your language savors of impiety. Too much free-thinking’s made your faith unsteady, And as I’ve warned you many times already, Twill get you into trouble before you're through. CLEANTE:

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So I’ve been told before by dupes like you: Being blind, you'd have all others blind as well; The clear-eyed man you call an infidel, And he who sees through humbug and pretense Is charged, by you, with want of reverence. Spare me your warnings, Brother; I have no fear

Of speaking out, for you and Heaven to hear, Against affected zeal and pious knavery. There’s true and false in piety, as in bravery, And just as those whose courage shines the most 70

In battle, are the least inclined to boast,

So those whose hearts are truly pure and lowly Don’t make a flashy show of being holy. There’s a vast difference, so it seems to me,

Tartuffe, Act I, Scene 5

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Between true piety and hypocrisy: How do you fail to see it, may I ask? Is not a face quite different from a mask? Cannot sincerity and cunning art, Reality and semblance, be told apart? Are scarecrows just like men, and do you hold That a false coin is just as good as gold? Ah, Brother, man’s a strangely fashioned creature Who seldom is content to follow Nature, But recklessly pursues his inclination Beyond the narrow bounds of moderation, And often, by transgressing Reason’s laws, Perverts a lofty aim or noble cause. A passing observation, but it applies. ORGON:

I see, dear Brother, that you're profoundly wise; You harbor all the insight of the age. 90

You are our one clear mind, our only sage,

The era’s oracle, its Cato too, And all mankind are fools compared to you. CLEANTE:

Brother, I don’t pretend to be a sage,

Nor have I all the wisdom of the age. There’s just one insight I would dare to claim: I know that true and false are not the same;

And just as there is nothing I more revere Than a soul whose faith is steadfast and sincere,

Nothing that I more cherish and admire 100

Than honest zeal and true religious fire,

So there is nothing that I find more base Than specious piety’s dishonest face— Than these bold mountebanks, these histrios Whose impious mummeries and hollow shows Exploit our love of Heaven, and make a jest Of all that men think holiest and best; These calculating souls who offer prayers Not to their Maker, but as public wares,

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And seek to buy respect and reputation With lifted eyes and sighs of exaltation; These charlatans, I say, whose pilgrim souls Proceed, by way of Heaven, toward earthly goals, Who weep and pray and swindle and extort, Who preach the monkish life, but haunt the court, Who make their zeal the partner of their vice— Such men are vengeful, sly, and cold as ice,

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And when there is an enemy to defame They cloak their spite in fair religion’s name, Their private spleen and malice being made To seem a high and virtuous crusade, Until, to mankind’s reverent applause, They crucify their foe in Heaven’s cause. Such knaves are all too common; yet, for the wise,

True piety isn’t hard to recognize, And, happily, these present times provide us With bright examples to instruct and guide us. Consider Ariston and Périandre; Look at Oronte, Alcidamas, Clitandre; Their virtue is acknowledged; who could doubt it? 130

But you won't hear them beat the drum about it. They’re never ostentatious, never vain,

And their religion’s moderate and humane; It’s not their way to criticize and chide: They think censoriousness a mark of pride, And therefore, letting others preach and rave, They show, by deeds, how Christians should behave. They think no evil of their fellow man,

But judge of him as kindly as they can. They don’t intrigue and wangle and conspire; 140

To lead a good life is their one desire; The sinner wakes no rancorous hate in them; It is the sin alone which they condemn;

Nor do they try to show a fiercer zeal For Heaven’s cause than Heaven itself could feel. These men I honor, these men I advocate As models for us all to emulate. Your man is not their sort at all, I fear: And, while your praise of him is quite sincere, I think that you’ve been dreadfully deluded. ORGON: 150

Now then, dear Brother, is your speech concluded? CLEANTE:

Why, yes. ORGON:

Your servant, Sir. [He turns to go.] CLEANTE:

No, Brother; wait. There’s one more matter. You agreed of late That young Valére might have your daughter’s hand. ORGON:

I did.

Tartuffe, Act I, Scene 5

CLEANTE:

And set the date, I understand.

ORGON: Quite so.

CLEANTE:

You've now postponed it; is that true?

ORGON: No doubt. CLEANTE:

The match no longer pleases you?

ORGON: Who knows? CLEANTE:

D’you mean to go back on your word?

ORGON: I won't say that. CLEANTE:

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Has anything occurred Which might entitle you to break your pledge? ORGON: Perhaps. CLEANTE: Why must you hem, and haw, and hedge? The boy asked me to sound you in this affair . . . ORGON: It’s been a pleasure. CLEANTE: But what shall I tell Valére? ORGON: Whatever you like. CLEANTE:

But what have you decided? What are your plans? ORGON: I plan, Sir, to be guided By Heaven’s will. CLEANTE: Come, Brother, don’t talk rot.

You've given Valére your word; will you keep it, or not? ORGON: Good day. CLEANTE: This looks like poor Valére’s undoing; I'll go and warn him that there’s trouble brewing.

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Act II Scene 1 ORGON: Mariane. MARIANE: Yes, Father?

ORGON: A word with you; come here. MARIANE:

What are you looking for? ORGON [peering into a small closet]: Eavesdroppers, dear. I’m making sure we shan'’t be overheard. Someone in there could catch our every word. Ah, good, we’re safe. Now, Mariane, my child,

Youre a sweet girl who’s tractable and mild, Whom | hold dear, and think most highly of. MARIANE: I’m deeply grateful, Father, for your love. ORGON: That’s well said, Daughter; and you can repay me If, in all things, you'll cheerfully obey me. MARIANE: To please you, Sir, is what delights me best. ORGON: Good, good. Now, what d’you think of Tartuffe, our guest?

MARIANE: Loins

ORGON: Yes. Weigh your answer; think it through. MARIANE: Oh, dear. I’ll say whatever you wish me to. ORGON: That’s wisely said, my Daughter. Say of him, then, That he’s the very worthiest of men, And that youre fond of him, and would rejoice In being his wife, if that should be my choice. Well? MARIANE: What?

ORGON: What’s that?

MARIANE:

Dies

Tartuffe, Act II, Scene 2

ORGON:

Well?

MARIANE: Forgive me, pray.

ORGON: Did you not hear me? MARIANE: Of whom, Sir, must I say

20

That I am fond of him, and would rejoice In being his wife, if that should be your choice? ORGON: Why, of Tartuffe.

MARIANE: But, Father, that’s false, you know.

Why would you have me say what isn’t so? ORGON: Because I am resolved it shall be true. That it’s my wish should be enough for you. MARIANE: You can’t mean, Father... ORGON: Yes, Tartuffe shall be

Allied by marriage to this family, And he’s to be your husband, is that clear? 30

It’s a father’s privilege . . .

Scene 2

ORGON [to DORINE]:

What are you doing in here? Is curiosity so fierce a passion With you, that you must eavesdrop in this fashion?

DORINE: There’s lately been a rumor going about— Based on some hunch or chance remark, no doubt—

That you mean Mariane to wed Tartuffe.

I’ve laughed it off, of course, as just a spoof.

ORGON: You find it so incredible? DORINE:

Yes, I do. I won't accept that story, even from you. ORGON:

10

Well, you'll believe it when the thing is done.

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DORINE: Yes, yes, of course. Go on and have your fun.

ORGON: Ive never been more serious in my life.

DORINE: Ha!

ORGON: Daughter, I mean it; youre to be his wife.

DORINE: No, don’t believe your father; it’s all a hoax. ORGON: See here, young woman...

DORINE: Come, Sir, no more jokes;

You can’t fool us.

ORGON: How dare you talk that way?

DORINE: All right, then: we believe you, sad to say. But how a man like you, who looks so wise And wears a moustache of such splendid size,

Can be so foolish as to... ORGON: 20

Silence, please! My girl, you take too many liberties. I’m master here, as you must not forget. DORINE: Do let’s discuss this calmly; don’t be upset. You can’t be serious, Sir, about this plan. What should that bigot want with Mariane? Praying and fasting ought to keep him busy. And then, in terms of wealth and rank, what is he?

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Why should a man of poverty like you Pick out a beggar son-in-law? ORGON: That will do. Speak of his poverty with reverence. His is a pure and saintly indigence Which far transcends all worldly pride and pelf. He lost his fortune, as he says himself, Because he cared for Heaven alone, and so Was careless of his interests here below. I mean to get him out of his present straits And help him to recover his estates—

Tartuffe, Act Il, Scene 2

Which, in his part of the world, have no small fame.

Poor though he is, he’s a gentleman just the same. DORINE: Yes, so he tells us; and, Sir, it seems to me Such pride goes very ill with piety. A man whose spirit spurns this dungy earth Ought not to brag of lands and noble birth;

Such worldly arrogance will hardly square With meek devotion and the life of prayer. ... But this reproach, I see, has drawn a blank; Let’s speak, then, of his person, not his rank.

Doesn't it seem to you a trifle grim To give a girl like her to a man like him? When two are so ill-suited, can’t you see What the sad consequence is bound to be? A young girl’s virtue is imperilled, Sir, When such a marriage is imposed on her; For if one’s bridegroom isn’t to one’s taste, It’s hardly an inducement to be chaste,

And many a man with horns upon his brow Has made his wife the thing that she is now. hard to

be a faithful

wife,

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ORGON: This servant-girl presumes to save my soul!

DORINE: You would do well to ponder what I’ve said. ORGON: Daughter, we'll disregard this dunderhead. Just trust your father’s judgment. Oh, I’m aware That I once promised you to young Valére; But now I hear he gambles, which greatly shocks me; What’s more, I’ve doubts about his orthodoxy. His visits to church, I note, are very few.

DORINE: Would you have him go at the same hours as you, And kneel nearby, to be sure of being seen? ORGON: I can dispense with such remarks, Dorine. [To MARIANE] Tartuffe, however, is sure of Heaven’s blessing, And that’s the only treasure worth possessing.

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This match will bring you joys beyond all measure; Your cup will overflow with every pleasure; You two will interchange your faithful loves 80

Like two sweet cherubs, or two turtle-doves. No harsh word shall be heard, no frown be seen,

And he shall make you happy as a queen. DORINE: And she'll make him a cuckold, just wait and see.

ORGON: What language!

DORINE: Oh, he’s a man of destiny; He’s made for horns, and what the stars demand

Your daughter’s virtue surely can’t withstand. ORGON: Don't interrupt me further. Why can’t you learn That certain things are none of your concern? DORINE: It’s for your own sake that I interfere. [She repeatedly interrupts ORGON just as he is turning to speak to his daughter. | ORGON: Most kind of you. Now, hold your tongue, d’you hear? DORINE: If I didn’t love you... ORGON: 90 Spare me your affection. DORINE: I love you, Sir, in spite of your objection. ORGON: Blast! DORINE: I can’t bear, Sir, for your honor’s sake,

To let you make this ludicrous mistake. ORGON: You mean to go on talking? DORINE: If I didn’t protest This sinful marriage, my conscience couldn’t rest. ORGON: If you don’t hold your tongue, you little shrew. . . DORINE: What, lost your temper? A pious man like you? ORGON: Yes! Yes! You talk and talk. ’'m maddened by it.

Tartuffe, Act Il, Scene 2

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Once and for all, I tell you to be quiet. DORINE: Well, Pll be quiet. But Pll be thinking hard. ORGON: Think all you like, but you had better guard That saucy tongue of yours, or I'll... |Turning back to MARIANE]

Now, child,

Pve weighed this matter fully. DORINE [aside]:

It drives me wild

That I can’t speak. [oRGON turns his head, and she is silent.]

ORGON: Tartuffe is no young dandy, But, still, his person... DORINE [aside]:

Is as sweet as candy.

ORGON: Is such that, even if you shouldn't care

For his other merits. . . [He turns and stands facing DORINE, arms crossed.|

DORINE [aside]:

They'll make a lovely pair.

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| How readily

av

ORGON [to DORINE]:

It seems you treat my orders as a joke.

DORINE: Why, what’s the matter? "Twas not to you I spoke.

ORGON: What were you doing? DORINE: Talking to myself, that’s all.

ORGON: Ah! [aside] One more bit of impudence and gall,

And I shall give her a good slap in the face. [He puts himself in position to slap her; DoRINE, whenever he glances at her,

stands immobile and silent.|

Daughter, you shall accept, and with good grace, The husband I’ve selected . . . Your wedding-day. . . [To poriNE] Why don’t you talk to yourself? DORINE: Pve nothing to say.

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ORGON: Come, just one word.

DORINE: No thank you, Sir. I pass.

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ORGON: Come, speak; I’m waiting.

DORINE: Pd not be such an ass. ORGON [turning to MARIANE]: In short, dear Daughter, I mean to be obeyed, And you must bow to the sound choice I’ve made. DORINE [moving away]: I'd not wed such a monster, even in jest. [ORGON attempts to slap her, but misses. | ORGON: Daughter, that maid of yours is a thorough pest; She makes me sinfully annoyed and nettled. I can’t speak further; my nerves are too unsettled. She’s so upset me by her insolent talk, Pll calm myself by going for a walk. Scene 3

DORINE [returning]: Well, have you lost your tongue, girl? Must I play Your part, and say the lines you ought to say? Faced with a fate so hideous and absurd,

Can you not utter one dissenting word?

MARIANE: What good would it do? A father’s power is great. DORINE: Resist him now, or it will be too late. MARIANE: But...

DORINE: Tell him one cannot love at a father’s whim; That you shall marry for yourself, not him; That since it’s you who are to be the bride, It’s you, not he, who must be satisfied; And that if his Tartuffe is so sublime,

He’s free to marry him at any time. MARIANE: I’ve bowed so long to Father’s strict control,

I couldn’t oppose him now, to save my soul.

Tartuffe, Act II, Scene 3

DORINE: Come, come, Mariane. Do listen to reason, won’t you? Valére has asked your hand. Do you love him, or don’t you?

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MARIANE: Oh, how unjust of you! What can you mean By asking such a question, dear Dorine? You know the depth of my affection for him; I’ve told you a hundred times how I adore him. DORINE: I don't believe in everything I hear; Who knows if your professions were sincere? MARIANE: They were, Dorine, and you do me wrong to doubt it; Heaven knows that I’ve been all too frank about it. DORINE: You love him, then? MARIANE: Oh, more than I can express. DORINE: And he, I take it, cares for you no less?

MARIANE: I think so. DORINE: And you both, with equal fire,

Burn to be married? MARIANE: That is our one desire.

DORINE:

What of Tartuffe, then? What of your father’s plan? MARIANE: 30

Pll kill myself, if ’'m forced to wed that man.

DORINE:

I hadn’t thought of that recourse. How splendid! Just die, and all your troubles will be ended!

A fine solution. Oh, it maddens me To hear you talk in that self-pitying key. MARIANE: Dorine, how harsh you are! It’s most unfair. You have no sympathy for my despair. DORINE: ve none at all for people who talk drivel And, faced with difficulties, whine and snivel.

MARIANE: No doubt I’m timid, but it would be wrong...

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DORINE: 40

True love requires a heart that’s firm and strong.

MARIANE: I’m strong in my affection for Valere, But coping with my father is his affair.

DORINE: But if your father’s brain has grown so cracked Over his dear Tartuffe that he can retract His blessing, though your wedding-day was named, It’s surely not Valére who’s to be blamed.

MARIANE: If Idefied my father, as you suggest, Would it not seem unmaidenly, at best? 50

Shall I defend my love at the expense Of brazenness and disobedience? Shall I parade my heart’s desires, and flaunt...

DORINE: No, I ask nothing of you. Clearly you want To be Madame Tartuffe, and I feel bound Not to oppose a wish so very sound. What right have I to criticize the match? Indeed, my dear, the man is a brilliant catch.

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Monsieur Tartuffe! Now, there’s a man of weight! Yes, yes, Monsieur Tartuffe, ’'m bound to state, Is quite a person; that’s not to be denied; Twill be no little thing to be his bride. The world already rings with his renown; He’s a great noble— in his native town;

His ears are red, he has a pink complexion, And all in all, he’ll suit you to perfection. MARIANE: Dear God! DORINE: Oh, how triumphant you will feel At having caught a husband so ideal! MARIANE: Oh, do stop teasing, and use your cleverness

To get me out of this appalling mess. Advise me, and I'll do whatever you say.

DORINE: 70

Ah no, a dutiful daughter must obey Her father, even if he weds her to an ape.

You've a bright future; why struggle to escape? Tartuffe will take you back where his family lives, To a small town aswarm with relatives—

Tartuffe, Act II, Scene 3

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Uncles and cousins whom you'll be charmed to meet. You'll be received at once by the elite, Calling upon the bailiff’s wife, no less— Even, perhaps, upon the mayoress, Who'll sit you down in the best kitchen chair. Then, once a year, you'll dance at the village fair To the drone of bagpipes —two of them, in fact— And see a puppet-show, or an animal act. Your husband... MARIANE: Oh, you turn my blood to ice! Stop torturing me, and give me your advice. DORINE [threatening to go]: Your servant, Madam. MARIANE: Dorine, I beg of you... DORINE: No, you deserve it; this marriage must go through. MARIANE: Dorine! DORINE: No. MARIANE: Not Tartuffe! You know I think him... DORINE: Tartuffe’s your cup of tea, and you shall drink him. MARIANE: I’ve always told you everything, and relied... DORINE: No. You deserve to be tartuffified. MARIANE: a

|0 '

Well, since you mock me and refuse to care,

Pll henceforth seek my solace in despair: Despair shall be my counsellor and friend,

And help me bring my sorrows to an end. [She starts to leave.| DORINE: There now, come back; my anger has subsided.

You do deserve some pity, I’ve decided. MARIANE: Dorine, if Father makes me undergo

This dreadful martyrdom, I'll die, I know.

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DORINE: Don’t fret; it won’t be difficult to discover Some plan of action . . . But here’s Valére, your lover.

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Scene 4 VALERE: Madame, I’ve just received some wondrous news

Regarding which Id like to hear your views. MARIANE: What news? VALERE:

You're marrying Tartuffe. MARIANE: I find That Father does have such a match in mind. VALERE: Your father, Madam...

MARIANE:

... has just this minute said That it’s Tartuffe he wishes me to wed. VALERE:

Can he be serious? MARIANE:

Oh, indeed he can;

He’s clearly set his heart upon the plan. VALERE:

And what position do you propose to take, Madam? MARIANE:

Why —I don’t know. VALERE:

For heaven’s sake— You don’t know? MARIANE: No. VALERE:

Well, well!

MARIANE: Advise me, do. VALERE:

Marry the man. That’s my advice to you. MARIANE:

That’s your advice? VALERE: eS:

MARIANE:

Truly? VALERE:

Oh, absolutely.

Tartuffe, Act I, Scene 4

You couldn't choose more wisely, more astutely. MARIANE: Thanks for this counsel; I’ll follow it, of course. VALERE: Do, do; I’m sure ’twill cost you no remorse.

MARIANE: To give it didn’t cause your heart to break. VALERE: I gave it, Madam, only for your sake. MARIANE: And it’s for your sake that I take it, Sir. 20

DORINE [withdrawing to the rear of the stage): Let’s see which fool will prove the stubborner. VALERE:

So! I am nothing to you, and it was flat Deception when you... MARIANE: Please, enough of that. You've told me plainly that I should agree To wed the man my father’s chosen for me,

And since you've designed to counsel me so wisely, I promise, Sir, to do as you advise me.

VALERE: Ah, no, twas not by me that you were swayed.

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No, your decision was already made; Though now, to save appearances, you protest That youre betraying me at my behest. MARIANE: Just as you say. VALERE: Quite so. And I now see

That you were never truly in love with me. MARIANE: Alas, you're free to think so if you choose. VALERE: I choose to think so, and here’s a bit of news:

You've spurned my hand, but I know where to turn For kinder treatment, as you shall quickly learn.

MARIANE: I’m sure you do. Your noble qualities Inspire affection... VALERE:

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Forget my qualities, please. overmuch, I find. you They don’t inspire I have in mind lady But there’s another

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Whose sweet and generous nature will not scorn To compensate me for the loss I’ve borne.

MARIANE: I’m no great loss, and I’m sure that you'll transfer Your heart quite painlessly from me to her. VALERE:

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Pll do my best to take it in my stride. The pain I feel at being cast aside Time and forgetfulness may put an end to. Or if I can’t forget, I shall pretend to. No self-respecting person is expected To go on loving once he’s been rejected. MARIANE: Now, that’s a fine, high-minded sentiment.

VALERE:

One to which any sane man would assent. Would you prefer it if I pined away In hopeless passion till my dying day? Am I to yield you to a rival’s arms And not console myself with other charms? MARIANE: Go then: console yourself; don’t hesitate. I wish you to; indeed, I cannot wait. VALERE:

You wish me to? MARIANE: Yes.

VALERE: 60

That’s the final straw. Madam, farewell. Your wish shall be my law. [He starts to leave, and then returns: this repeatedly.|

MARIANE: Splendid. VALERE [coming back again|:

This breach, remember, is of your making; It’s you who’ve driven me to the step I’m taking. MARIANE: Of course. VALERE [coming back again): Remember, too, that I am merely

Following your example. MARIANE: I see that clearly. VALERE: Enough. I'll go and do your bidding, then.

Tartuffe, Act II, Scene 4

MARIANE: Good. VALERE [coming back again]: You shall never see my face again. MARIANE: Excellent. VALERE [walking to the door, then turning about]: Yes?

MARIANE: What? VALERE:

What’s that? What did you say? MARIANE: Nothing. You're dreaming. VALERE: Ah. Well, ’m on my way.

Farewell, Madame. [He moves slowly away. |

MARIANE: Farewell. DORINE [fo MARIANE]: If you ask me, 70

Both of you are as mad as mad can be. Do stop this nonsense, now. I’ve only let you Squabble so long to see where it would get you. Whoa there, Monsieur Valeére! [She goes and seizes VALERE by the arm; he makes a great show of resistance.| VALERE: What’s this, Dorine?

DORINE: Come here. VALERE:

No, no, my heart’s too full of spleen. Don’t hold me back; her wish must be obeyed. DORINE: Stop! VALERE: It’s too late now; my decision’s made. DORINE: Oh, pooh!

MARIANE [aside]: He hates the sight of me, that’s plain.

Tl go, and so deliver him from pain. DORINE [leaving VALERE, running after MARIANE]:

And now you run away! Come back.

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MARIANE: 80

No, no. Nothing you say will keep me here. Let go! VALERE [aside]: She cannot bear my presence, I perceive. To spare her further torment, I shall leave. DORINE [leaving MARIANE, running after VALERE]: Again! You'll not escape, Sir; don’t you try it. Come here, you two. Stop fussing, and be quiet. [She takes vALERE by the hand, then MARIANE, and draws them together.|

VALERE [to DORINE]:

What do you want of me? MARIANE [f0 DORINE]:

What is the point of this?

DORINE: We're going to have a little armistice. [To VALERE] Now weren't you silly to get so overheated? VALERE:

Didn't you see how badly I was treated? DORINE [fo MARIANE]:

Aren't you a simpleton, to have lost your head? 90

MARIANE: Didn't you hear the hateful things he said? DORINE [fo VALERE]: Youre both great fools. Her sole desire, Valére,

Is to be yours in marriage. To that I’ll swear. [To MARIANE] He loves you only, and he wants no wife But you, Mariane. On that Pll stake my life. MARIANE [to VALERE]|: Then why you advised me so, I cannot see.

VALERE [to MARIANE|:

On such a question, why ask advice of me? DORINE: Oh, you're impossible. Give me your hands, you two. [To vALERE] Yours first.

VALERE [giving DORINE his hand]: But why? DORINE [to MARIANE|:

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And now a hand from you. MARIANE [also giving DORINE her hand}: What are you doing? DORINE: There: a perfect fit. You suit each other better than you'll admit. [VALERE and MARIANE hold hands for some time without looking at each other.]

Tartuffe, Act II, Scene 4

VALERE [turning toward MARIANE|: Ah, come, don’t be so haughty. Give a man

A look of kindness, won't you, Mariane? [MARIANE turns toward VALBRE and smiles.|

DORINE: I tell you, lovers are completely mad! VALERE [tO MARIANE]:

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Now come, confess that you were very bad To hurt my feelings as you did just now. I have a just complaint, you must allow. MARIANE: You must allow that you were most unpleasant... DORINE: Let’s table that discussion for the present; Your father has a plan which must be stopped. MARIANE: Advise us, then; what means must we adopt? DORINE: We'll use all manner of means, and all at once. [To MARIANE] Your father’s addled; he’s acting like a dunce.

Therefore you'd better humor the old fossil. Pretend to yield to him, be sweet and docile,

And then postpone, as often as necessary, The day on which you have agreed to marry. Youll thus gain time, and time will turn the trick. Sometimes, for instance, you'll be taken sick, 120

And that will seem good reason for delay; Or some bad omen will make you change the day— Youll dream of muddy water, or you'll pass A dead man’s hearse, or break a looking-glass.

If all else fails, no man can marry you Unless you take his ring and say “I do.” But now, let’s separate. If they should find Us talking here, our plot might be divined. [To vALERE] Go to your friends, and tell them what’s occurred,

And have them urge her father to keep his word. 130

Meanwhile, we'll stir her brother into action, And get Elmire, as well, to join our faction.

Good-bye. VALERE [to MARIANE]: Though each of us will do his best,

It’s your true heart on which my hopes shall rest. MARIANE [f0 VALERE]:

Regardless of what Father may decide, None but Valére shall claim me as his bride.

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VALERE:

Oh, how those words content me! Come what will... DORINE: Oh, lovers, lovers! Their tongues are never still. Be off, now.

VALERE [turning to go, then turning back]: One last word... DORINE: No time to chat: You leave by this door; and you leave by that. [DoRINE pushes them, by the shoulders, toward opposing doors.| Act III Scene 1

DAMIS: May lightning strike May all men call me If any fear or scruple From settling things,

me even as I speak, cowardly and weak, holds me back at once, with that great quack!

DORINE: Now, don’t give way to violent emotion. Your father’s merely talked about this notion, And words and deeds are far from being one. Much that is talked about is left undone. DAMIS: No, I must stop that scoundrel’s machinations;

Pll go and tell him off; I’m out of patience. DORINE: Do calm down and be practical. I had rather My mistress dealt with him—and with your father. She has some influence with Tartuffe, ?ve noted. He hangs upon her words, seems most devoted, And may, indeed, be smitten by her charm.

Pray Heaven it’s true! "Twould do our cause no harm. She sent for him, just now, to sound him out On this affair you're so incensed about; She'll find out where he stands, and tell him, too, 20

What dreadful strife and trouble will ensue If he lends countenance to your father’s plan. I couldn't get in to see him, but his man

Says that he’s almost finished with his prayers. Go, now. Pll catch him when he comes downstairs. DAMIS: I want to hear this conference, and I will.

Tartuffe, Act III, Scene 2

DORINE: No, they must be alone. DAMIS: Oh, I'll keep still.

DORINE: Not you. I know your temper. You'd start a brawl, And shout and stamp your foot and spoil it all. Go on.

DAMIS: I won't; I have a perfect right . . .

DORINE: 30

Lord, you're a nuisance! He’s coming; get out of sight. [Damis conceals himself in a closet at the rear of the stage.| Scene 2

TARTUFFE [observing DORINE, and calling to his manservant offstage): Hang up my hair-shirt, put my scourge in place, And pray, Laurent, for Heaven’s perpetual grace. I’m going to the prison now, to share My last two coins with the poor wretches there. DORINE [aside]: Dear God, what affectation! What a fake!

TARTUFFE: You wished to see me?

DORINE: Yes... TARTUFFE [taking a handkerchief from his pocket}: For mercy’s sake,

Please take this handkerchief, before you speak. DORINE: What? TARTUFFE: Cover that bosom, girl. The flesh is weak,

And unclean thoughts are difficult to control. Such sights as that can undermine the soul. DORINE: Your soul, it seems, has very poor defenses,

And flesh makes quite an impact on your senses. It’s strange that youre so easily excited; My own desires are not so soon ignited,

And if I saw you naked as a beast, Not all your hide would tempt me in the least. TARTUFFE: Girl, speak more modestly; unless you do, I shall be forced to take my leave of you.

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DORINE: Oh, no, it’s |who must be on my way; I’ve just one little message to convey. Madame is coming down, and begs you, Sir, To wait and have a word or two with her. TARTUFFE: Gladly. DORINE [aside]:

That had a softening effect! I think my guess about him was correct. TARTUFFE: Will she be long? DORINE: No: that’s her step I hear. Ah, here she is, and I shall disappear. Scene 3

TARTUFFE: May Heaven, whose infinite goodness we adore, Preserve your body and soul forevermore, And bless your days, and answer thus the plea Of one who is its humblest votary. ELMIRE: I thank you for that pious wish. But please, Do take a chair and let’s be more at ease. [They sit down.]

TARTUFFE: I trust that you are once more well and strong? ELMIRE: Oh, yes: the fever didn’t last for long. TARTUFFE: My prayers are too unworthy, I am sure, To have gained from Heaven this most gracious cure; But lately, Madam, my every supplication Has had for object your recuperation.

ELMIRE: You shouldn't have troubled so. I don’t deserve it. TARTUFFE: Your health is priceless, Madam, and to preserve it I'd gladly give my own, in all sincerity. ELMIRE: Sir, you outdo us all in Christian charity. You've been most kind. I count myself your debtor. TARTUFFE: "Twas nothing, Madam. I long to serve you better.

Tartuffe, Act III, Scene 3

20

30

ELMIRE: There’s a private matter I’m anxious to discuss. I’m glad there’s no one here to hinder us. TARTUFFE: I too am glad; it floods my heart with bliss To find myself alone with you like this. For just this chance I’ve prayed with all my power— But prayed in vain, until this happy hour. ELMIRE: This won't take long, Sir, and I hope you'll be Entirely frank and unconstrained with me. TARTUFFE: Indeed, there’s nothing I had rather do Than bare my inmost heart and soul to you. First, let me say that what remarks I’ve made About the constant visits you are paid Were prompted not by any mean emotion, But rather by a pure and deep devotion, A fervent zeal...

ELMIRE: No need for explanation. Your sole concern, I’m sure, was my salvation.

TARTUEFFE [taking ELMIRE's hand and pressing herfingertips]: Quite so; and such great fervor do I feel...

ELMIRE: Ooh! Please! You're pinching! TARTUFFE:

40

Twas from excess of zeal. I never meant to cause you pain, I swear. I'd rather... [He places his hand on ELmire’s knee.] ELMIRE: What can your hand be doing there? TARTUFEE: Feeling your gown; what soft, fine-woven stuff! ELMIRE: Please, I’m extremely ticklish. That’s enough. [She draws her chair away; TARTUFFE pulls his after her.] TARTUEEE [fondling the lace collar of her gown: My, my what lovely lacework on your dress! The workmanship’s miraculous, no less. I’ve not seen anything to equal it. ELMIRE: Yes, quite. But let’s talk business for a bit. They say my husband means to break his word

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And give his daughter to you, Sir. Had you heard?

TARTUFFE:

50

He did once mention it. But I confess I dream of quite a different happiness. It’s elsewhere, Madam, that my eyes discern The promise of that bliss for which I yearn.

ELMIRE: I see: you care for nothing here below.

TARTUFFE Ah, well—my heart’s not made of stone, you know.

ELMIRE: All your desires mount heavenward, I’m sure, In scorn of all that’s earthly and impure.

TARTUFFE: A love of heavenly beauty does not preclude

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A proper love for earthly pulchritude; Our senses are quite rightly captivated By perfect works our Maker has created. Some glory clings to all that Heaven has made; In you, all Heaven’s marvels are displayed. On that fair face, such beauties have been lavished, The eyes are dazzled and the heart is ravished; How could I look on you, O flawless creature,

And not adore the Author of all Nature, Feeling a love both passionate and pure For you, his triumph of self-portraiture? At first, I trembled lest that love should be A subtle snare that Hell had laid for me; 70

I vowed to flee the sight of you, eschewing A rapture that might prove my soul’s undoing; But soon, fair being, I became aware

That my deep passion could be made to square With rectitude, and with my bounden duty. I thereupon surrendered to your beauty. It is, 1know, presumptuous on my part

To bring you this poor offering of my heart, And it is not my merit, Heaven knows,

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But your compassion on which my hopes repose. You are my peace, my solace, my salvation; On you depends my bliss— or desolation; I bide your judgment and, as you think best, I shall be either miserable or blest.

ELMIRE: Your declaration is most gallant, Sir, But don’t you think it’s out of character?

Tartuffe, Act III, Scene 3

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You'd have done better to restrain your passion And think before you spoke in such a fashion. It ill becomes a pious man like you... TARTUFFE: I may be pious, but I’m human too: With your celestial charms before his eyes, A man has not the power to be wise. I know such words sound strangely, coming from me, But I’m no angel, nor was meant to be, And if you blame my passion, you must needs Reproach as well the charms on which it feeds. Your loveliness I had no sooner seen Than you became my soul’s unrivalled queen; Before your seraph glance, divinely sweet, My heart’s defenses crumbled in defeat, And nothing fasting, prayer, or tears might do Could stay my spirit from adoring you. My eyes, my sighs have told you in the past What now my lips make bold to say at last, And if, in your great goodness, you will deign To look upon your slave, and ease his pain,— If, in compassion for my soul’s distress,

You'll stoop to comfort my unworthiness, I'll raise to you, in thanks for that sweet manna, An endless hymn, an infinite hosanna. With me, of course, there need be no anxiety, 110

No fear of scandal or of notoriety. These young court gallants, whom all the ladies fancy, Are vain in speech, in action rash and chancy; When they succeed in love, the world soon knows it;

No favor’s granted them but they disclose it And by the looseness of their tongues profane The very altar where their hearts have lain. Men of my sort, however, love discreetly,

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And one may trust our reticence completely. My keen concern for my good name insures The absolute security of yours;

In short, I offer you, my dear Elmire, Love without scandal, pleasure without fear. ELMIRE: ve heard your well-turned speeches to the end,

And what you urge I clearly apprehend. Aren’t you afraid that I may take a notion To tell my husband of your warm devotion,

And that, supposing he were duly told,

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His feelings toward you might grow rather cold? TARTUFFE: I know, dear lady, that your exceeding charity 130 Will lead your heart to pardon my temerity; That you'll excuse my violent affection As human weakness, human imperfection;

And that—O fairest! —you will bear in mind That ?’m but flesh and blood, and am not blind.

ELMIRE: Some women might do otherwise, perhaps,

But I shall be discreet about your lapse; Pll tell my husband nothing of what’s occurred If, in return, you'll give your solemn word To advocate as forcefully as you can 140

The marriage of Valere and Mariane,

Renouncing all desire to dispossess Another of his rightful happiness, And eee Scene 4

DAMISs [emerging from the closet where he has been hiding]: No! We'll not hush up this vile affair; I heard it all inside that closet there, Where Heaven, in order to confound the pride

Of this great rascal, prompted me to hide. Ah, now I have my long-awaited chance To punish his deceit and arrogance, And give my father clear and shocking proof Of the black character of his dear Tartuffe.

ELMIRE: Ah no, Damis; [ll be content if he

10

Will study to deserve my leniency. I’ve promised silence—don’t make me break my word; To make a scandal would be too absurd. Good wives laugh off such trifles, and forget them; Why should they tell their husbands, and upset them?

DAMIS: :

4 7 Shes ES sities oe ee

And

watched this insolen It DIZOL

eSA

Tartuffe, Act III, Scene 6

Thwarting my marriage-hopes, and poor Valére’s. It’s high time that my father was undeceived, And now I’ve proof that can’t be disbelieved— Proof that was furnished me by Heaven above. It’s too good not to take advantage of. This is my chance, and I deserve to lose it If, for one moment, I hesitate to use it. ELMIRE: Dams... DAMIS: No, I must do what I think right. Madam, my heart is bursting with delight, And, say whatever you will, I’ll not consent To lose the sweet revenge on which I’m bent. Pll settle matters without more ado; And here, most opportunely, is my cue. Scene5

DAMIS: Father, I’m glad you've joined us. Let us advise you Of some fresh news which doubtless will surprise you. You've just now been repaid with interest For all your loving-kindness to our guest. He’s proved his warm and grateful feelings toward you; It’s with a pair of horns he would reward you. Yes, I surprised him with your wife, and heard His whole adulterous offer, every word. She, with her all too gentle disposition,

Would not have told you of his proposition; But I shall not make terms with brazen lechery, And feel that not to tell you would be treachery. ELMIRE: And I hold that one’s husband’s peace of mind Should not be spoilt by tattle of this kind. One’s honor doesn’t require it: to be proficient

In keeping men at bay is quite sufficient. These are my sentiments, and I wish, Damis,

That you had heeded me and held your peace. Scene 6

ORGON: Can it be true, this dreadful thing I hear? TARTUFFE: Yes, Brother, I’m a wicked man, | fear:

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A wretched sinner, all depraved and twisted, The greatest villain that has ever existed. My life’s one heap of crimes, which grows each minute; There’s naught but foulness and corruption in it; And I perceive that Heaven, outraged by me, Has chosen this occasion to mortify me. Charge me with any deed you wish to name; Pll not defend myself, but take the blame. Believe what you are told, and drive Tartuffe Like some base criminal from beneath your roof; Yes, drive me hence, and with a parting curse: I shan’t protest, for I deserve far worse.

ORGON [to DAMIS]: Ah, you deceitful boy, how dare you try

To stain his purity with so foul a lie? DAMIS: What! Are you taken in by such a bluff? Did you not hear... ? ORGON: Enough, you rogue, enough!

TARTUFFE: 20

Ah, Brother, let him speak: youre being unjust. Believe his story; the boy deserves your trust. Why, after all, should you have faith in me? How can you know what I might do, or be? Is it on my good actions that you base Your favor? Do you trust my pious face? Ah, no, don’t be deceived by hollow shows;

I’m far, alas, from being what men suppose; Though the world takes me for a man of worth, I’m truly the most worthless man on earth. [To pais] Yes, my dear son, speak out now: call me the chief 30

Of sinners, a wretch, a murderer, a thief; Load me with all the names men most abhor; Pll not complain; I’ve earned them all, and more;

Pll kneel here while you pour them on my head As a just punishment for the life I’ve led. ORGON [to TARTUFFE]:

This is too much, dear Brother. [To DAMIs] Have you no heart? DAMIS: Are you so hoodwinked by this rascal’s art... ? ORGON: Be still, you monster.

[To TARTUFFE]| [To pamts] Villain!

Brother, I pray you, rise.

Tartuffe, Act II, Scene 6

DAMIS: Bittockh

ORGON: Silence!

DAMIS: ORGON:

Can't you realize... ?

Just one word more, and I’ll tear you limb from limb.

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TARTUFFE: In God’s name, Brother, don’t be harsh with him. I'd rather far be tortured at the stake Than see him bear one scratch for my poor sake. ORGON [to DAMIs]: Ingrate!

TARTUFFE: If Imust beg you, on bended knee, To pardon him... orGon [falling to his knees, addressing TARTUFFE]: Such goodness cannot be! [To pamis] Now, there’s true charity!

DAMIS: What, you...

?

ORGON: Villain, be still!

I know your motives; I know you wish him ill: Yes, all of you—wife, children, servants, all— Conspire against him and desire his fall, 50

Employing every shameful trick you can To alienate me from this saintly man. Ah, but the more you seek to drive him away, The more I'll do to keep him. Without delay, [ll spite this household and confound its pride By giving him my daughter as his bride. DAMIS: Youre going to force her to accept his hand? ORGON: Yes, and this very night, d’you understand? I shall defy you all, and make it clear That I’m the one who gives the orders here. Come, wretch, kneel down and clasp his blessed feet,

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And ask his pardon for your black deceit. DAMIS: I ask that swindler’s pardon? Why, I'd rather .. . ORGON: So! You insult him, and defy your father!

A stick! A stick! [to TARTUFFE] No, no—release me, do.

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[To pamis] Out of my house this minute! Be off with you,

And never dare set foot in it again. DAMIS: Well, I shall go, but...

ORGON: Well, go quickly, then. I disinherit you; an empty purse Is all you'll get from me—except my curse! Scene 7

ORGON: How he blasphemed your goodness! What a son! TARTUFFE: Forgive him, Lord, as I’ve already done.

[To orGoN] You can't know how it hurts when someone tries

To blacken me in my dear Brother’s eyes. ORGON: Abh! TARTUFFE: The mere thought of such ingratitude Plunges my soul into so dark a mood... Such horror grips my heart . . . I gasp for breath, And cannot speak, and feel myself near death. oORGON [He runs, in tears, to the door through which he has just driven his son.]: You blackguard! Why did I spare you? Why did I not Break you in little pieces on the spot? Compose yourself, and don’t be hurt, dear friend. TARTUFFE: These scenes, these dreadful quarrels, have got to end.

20

[ve much upset your household, and I perceive That the best thing will be for me to leave. ORGON: What are you saying! TARTUFFE: They're all against me here; They’d have you think me false and insincere. ORGON: Ah, what of that? Have I ceased believing in you? TARTUFFE: Their adverse talk will certainly continue, And charges which you now repudiate You may find credible at a later date. ORGON: No, Brother, never.

Tartuffe, Act IV, Scene 1

TARTUFFE:

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Brother, a wife can sway Her husband’s mind in many a subtle way. ORGON: No, no. TARTUFFE: To leave at once is the solution; Thus only can I end their persecution. ORGON: No, no, Pll not allow it; you shall remain. TARTUFFE: Ah, well; ’twill mean much martyrdom and pain, But if you wish it... ORGON: Ah! TARTUFFE: Enough; so be it. But one thing must be settled, as I see it. For your dear honor, and for our friendship’s sake, There’s one precaution I feel bound to take. I shall avoid your wife, and keep away... ORGON: No, you shall not, whatever they may say. It pleases me to vex them, and for spite I'd have them see you with her day and night. What's more, I’m going to drive them to despair By making you my only son and heir; This very day, I'll give to you alone Clear deed and title to everything I own. A dear, good friend and son-in-law-to-be Is more than wife, or child, or kin to me.

Will you accept my offer, dearest son?

TARTUFFE: In all things, let the will of Heaven be done.

ORGON: Poor fellow! Come, we'll go draw up the deed.

Then let them burst with disappointed greed! Act IV Scene 1 CLEANTE: Yes, all the town’s discussing it, and truly,

Their comments do not flatter you unduly.

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I’m glad we’ve met, Sir, and I'll give my view Of this sad matter in a word or two. As for who’s guilty, that I shan’t discuss; Let’s say it was Damis who caused the fuss; Assuming, then, that you have been ill-used By young Damis, and groundlessly accused, Ought not a Christian to forgive, and ought He not to stifle every vengeful thought? Should you stand by and watch a father make His only son an exile for your sake? Again I tell you frankly, be advised: The whole town, high and low, is scandalized;

This quarrel must be mended, and my advice is Not to push matters to a further crisis. No, sacrifice your wrath to God above, And help Damis regain his father’s love. TARTUFFE:

20

Alas, for my part I should take great joy In doing so. I’ve nothing against the boy. I pardon all, I harbor no resentment;

To serve him would afford me much contentment. But Heaven’s interest will not have it so: If he comes back, then I shall have to go. After his conduct—so extreme, so vicious—

30

Our further intercourse would look suspicious. God knows what people would think! Why, they'd describe My goodness to him as a sort of bribe; Theyd say that out of guilt I made pretense Of loving-kindness and benevolence— That, fearing my accuser’s tongue, I strove To buy his silence with a show of love. CLEANTE:

ae ae te tay remmanceeweAadahe obey 40

Without regard to what the world may say. What! Shall the fear of being misunderstood Prevent our doing what is right and good? No, no; let’s simply do what Heaven ordains,

And let no other thoughts perplex our brains.

Tartuffe, Act IV, Scene 1

TARTUFFE: Again, Sir, let me say that I’ve forgiven Damis, and thus obeyed the laws of Heaven;

50

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But I am not commanded by the Bible To live with one who smears my name with libel. CLEANTE: Were you commanded, Sir, to indulge the whim Of poor Orgon, and to encourage him In suddenly transferring to your name A large estate to which you have no claim? TARTUFFE: ‘Twould never occur to those who know me best To think I acted from self-interest. The treasures of this world I quite despise; Their specious glitter does not charm my eyes; And if I have resigned myself to taking The gift which my dear Brother insists on making, I do so only, as he well understands, Lest so much wealth fall into wicked hands, Lest those to whom it might descend in time Turn it to purposes of sin and crime, And not, as I shall do, make use of it

For Heaven’s glory and mankind’s benefit. CLEANTE: Forget these trumped-up fears. Your argument

Is one the rightful heir might well resent; It is a moral burden to inherit Such wealth, but give Damis a chance to bear it. 70

And would it not be worse to be accused Of swindling, than to see that wealth misused? I’m shocked that you allowed Orgon to broach This matter, and that you feel no self-reproach; Does true religion teach that lawful heirs May freely be deprived of what is theirs? And if the Lord has told you in your heart That you and young Damis must dwell apart, Would it not be the decent thing to beat A generous and honorable retreat, Rather than let the son of the house be sent,

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For your convenience, into banishment? Sir, if you wish to prove the honesty

Of your intentions... TARTUFFE: Sir, it is half-past three.

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I’ve certain pious duties to attend to, And hope my prompt departure won't offend you. CLEANTE [alone]: Damn. Scene 2

DORINE: Stay, Sir, and help Mariane, for Heaven’s sake! She’s suffering so, I fear her heart will break.

Her father’s plan to marry her off tonight Has put the poor child in a desperate plight. I hear him coming. Let’s stand together, now, And see if we can’t change his mind, somehow, About this match we all deplore and fear. Scene 3

ORGON: Hah! Glad to find you all assembled here. [To MARIANE] This contract, child, contains your happiness, And what it says I think your heart can guess. MARIANE |falling to her knees]:

Sir, by that Heaven which sees me here distressed, And by whatever else can move your breast, Do not employ a father’s power, I pray you, To crush my heart and force it to obey you, Nor by your harsh commands oppress me so That I'll begrudge the duty which I owe— And do not so embitter and enslave me That I shall hate the very life you gave me. If my sweet hopes must perish, if you refuse To give me to the one I’ve dared to choose, Spare me at least—I beg you, I implore— The pain of wedding one whom I abhor; And do not, by a heartless use of force,

Drive me to contemplate some desperate course. oRGON [feeling himself touched by her): Be firm, my soul. No human weakness, now.

20

MARIANE: I don’t resent your love for him. Allow Your heart free rein, Sir; give him your property, And if that’s not enough, take mine from me;

He’s welcome to my money; take it, do, But don't, I pray, include my person too. Spare me, I beg you; and let me end the tale

Tartuffe, Act IV, Scene 3

30

Of my sad days behind a convent veil. ORGON: A convent! Hah! When crossed in their amours, All lovesick girls have had the same thought as yours. Get up! The more you loathe the man, and dread him, The more ennobling it will be to wed him. Marry Tartuffe, and mortify your flesh! Enough; don’t start that whimpering afresh. DORINE: But why... ? ORGON: Be still, there. Speak when youre spoken to. Not one more bit of impudence out of you. CLEANTE: If Imay offer a word of counsel here . . . ORGON: Brother, in counseling you have no peer; All your advice is forceful, sound, and clever; I don't propose to follow it, however. ELMIRE [tO ORGON]: I am amazed, and don’t know what to say;

40

Your blindness simply takes my breath away. You are indeed bewitched, to take no warning From our account of what occurred this morning. ORGON: Madam, I know a few plain facts, and one

Is that you're partial to my rascal son; Hence, when he sought to make Tartuffe the victim

50

Of a base lie, you dared not contradict him. Ah, but you underplayed your part, my pet; You should have looked more angry, more upset. ELMIRE: When men make overtures, must we reply With righteous anger and a battle-cry? Must we turn back their amorous advances With sharp reproaches and with fiery glances? Myself, I find such offers merely amusing, And make no scenes and fusses in refusing; My taste is for good-natured rectitude,

And I dislike the savage sort of prude Who guards her virtue with her teeth and claws,

And tears men’s eyes out for the slightest cause: The Lord preserve me from such honor as that, 60

Which bites and scratches like an alley-cat! I’ve found that a polite and cool rebuff

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Discourages a lover quite enough. ORGON: I know the facts, and I shall not be shaken. ELMIRE: I marvel at your power to be mistaken. Would it, I wonder, carry weight with you If Icould show you that our tale was true? ORGON: Show me? ELMIRE: Ness

ORGON: Rot.

ELMIRE: Come, what if Ifound a way

To make you see the facts as plain as day? ORGON: Nonsense.

ELMIRE: Do answer me; don’t be absurd. 70

I’m not now asking you to trust our word. Suppose that from some hiding-place in here You learned the whole sad truth by eye and ear— What would you say of your good friend, after that? ORGON: Why, Pd say .. . nothing, by Jehoshaphat!

It can’t be true. ELMIRE: You've been too long deceived,

And I’m quite tired of being disbelieved. Come now: let’s put my statements to the test, And you shall see the truth made manifest. ORGON: Pll take that challenge. Now do your uttermost. We'll see how you make good your empty boast. ELMIRE [tO DORINE]:

Send him to me. DORINE: 80

He’s crafty; it may be hard To catch the cunning scoundrel off his guard. ELMIRE: No, amorous men are gullible. Their conceit So blinds them that they’re never hard to cheat. Have him come down. [To CLEANTE and MARIANE] Please leave us, for a bit.

Tartuffe, Act IV, Scene 5

Scene 4

ELMIRE: Pull up this table, and get under it. ORGON: What? ELMIRE: It's essential that you be well-hidden. ORGON: Why there?

ELMIRE: Oh, Heavens! Just do as you are bidden.

I have my plans; we'll soon see how they fare. Under the table, now; and once you're there, Take care that you are neither seen nor heard. ORGON: Well, I'll indulge you, since I gave my word To see you through this infantile charade. ELMIRE: Once it is over, you'll be glad we played. [To her husband, who is now under the table] I’m going to act quite strangely, now, and you Must not be shocked at anything I do. Whatever I may say, you must excuse As part of that deceit I’m forced to use. I shall employ sweet speeches in the task Of making that impostor drop his mask; Pll give encouragement to his bold desires,

And furnish fuel to his amorous fires. Since it’s for your sake, and for his destruction, 20

That I shall seem to yield to his seduction, Pll gladly stop whenever you decide That all your doubts are fully satisfied. Pll count on you, as soon as you have seen What sort of man he is, to intervene,

And not expose me to his odious lust One moment longer than you feel you must. Remember: you're to save me from my plight Whenever . . . He’s coming! Hush! Keep out of sight! Scene 5 TARTUFFE: You wish to have a word with me, I’m told. ELMIRE: Yes. I’ve a little secret to unfold.

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10

MOLIERE

Before I speak, however, it would be wise To close that door, and look about for spies. [TARTUFFE goes to the door, closes it, and returns.| The very last thing that must happen now Is a repetition of this morning’s row. I’ve never been so badly caught off guard. Oh, how I feared for you! You saw how hard I tried to make that troublesome Damis Control his dreadful temper, and hold his peace. In my confusion, I didn’t have the sense

Simply to contradict his evidence; But as it happened, that was for the best, And all has worked out in our interest. This storm has only bettered your position; My husband doesn’t have the least suspicion, And now, in mockery of those who do,

He bids me be continually with you. And that is why, quite fearless of reproof, 20 I now can be alone with my Tartuffe, And why my heart— perhaps too quick to yield— Feels free to let its passion be revealed. TARTUFFE: Madam, your words confuse me. Not long ago, You spoke in quite a different style, you know. ELMIRE: Ah, Sir, if that refusal made you smart, It’s little that you know of woman’s heart,

Or what that heart is trying to convey When it resists in such a feeble way! Always, at first, our modesty prevents 30

The frank avowal of tender sentiments;

However high the passion which inflames us, Still, to confess its power somehow shames us.

Thus we reluct, at first, yet in a tone Which tells you that our heart is overthrown,

That what our lips deny, our pulse confesses, And that, in time, all noes will turn to yesses. I fear my words are all too frank and free, And a poor proof of woman’s modesty; 40

But since I’m started, tell me, if you will— Would I have tried to make Damis be still, Would I have listened, calm and unoffended,

Until your lengthy offer of love was ended, And been so very mild in my reaction, Had your sweet words not given me satisfaction?

Tartuffe, Act IV, Scene 5

50

And when I tried to force you to undo The marriage-plans my husband has in view, What did my urgent pleading signify If not that I admired you, and that I Deplored the thought that someone else might own Part of a heart I wished for mine alone? TARTUFFE:

r floc ds my ave sense, and drains s

pe

60

ee all— aaa onl)

hed yet famust ie leave, now, to confess Some lingering doubts as to my happiness. Might this not be a trick? Might not the catch Be that you wish me to break off the match With Mariane, and so have feigned to love me?

I shan’t quite trust your fond opinion of me Until the feelings you've expressed so sweetly Are demonstrated somewhat more concretely, And you have shown, by certain kind concessions, That I may put my faith in your professions. ELMIRE [She coughs, to warn her husband.|:

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Why be in such a hurry? Must my heart Exhaust its bounty at the very start? To make that sweet admission cost me dear, But you'll not be content, it would appear, Unless my store of favors is disbursed To the last farthing, and at the very first. TARTUFFE;

The less we merit, the less we dare to hope, And with our doubts, mere words can never cope. We trust no promised bliss till we receive it;

Not till a joy is ours can we believe it. I, who so little merit your esteem, Can’t credit this fulfillment of my dream, And shan’t believe it, Madam, until I savor 80

Some palpable assurance of your favor. ELMIRE:

My, how tyrannical your love can be, And how it flusters and perplexes me! How furiously you take one’s heart in hand, And make your every wish a fierce command! Come, must you hound and harry me to death?

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Will you not give me time to catch my breath? Can it be right to press me with such force,

Give me no quarter, show me no remorse, And take advantage, by your stern insistence, 90 Of the fond feelings which weaken my resistance? TARTUFFE: Well, if you look with favor upon my love, Why, then, begrudge me some clear proof thereof? ELMIRE: But how can I consent without offense To Heaven, toward which you feel such reverence? TARTUFFE: If Heaven is all that holds you back, don’t worry. I can remove that hindrance in a hurry. Nothing of that sort need obstruct our path. ELMIRE: Must one not be afraid of Heaven’s wrath? TARTUFFE: Madam, forget such fears, and be my pupil, 100 And I shall teach you how to conquer scruple. Some joys, it’s true, are wrong in Heaven’s eyes; Yet Heaven is not averse to compromise; There is a science, lately formulated,

Whereby one’s conscience may be liberated, And any wrongful act you care to mention May be redeemed by purity of intention. Pll teach you, Madam, the secrets of that science;

Meanwhile, just place on me your full reliance. Assuage my keen desires, and feel no dread: 110

The sin, if any, shall be on my head.

[ELMIRE coughs, this time more loudly.| You've a bad cough. ELMIRE: Yes, yes. It’s bad indeed. TARTUEFFE [producing a little paper bag}: A bit of licorice may be what you need. ELMIRE: No, I’ve a stubborn cold, it seems. I’m sure it

Will take much more than licorice to cure it. TARTUFFE: How aggravating.

ELMIRE: Oh, more than I can say. TARTUFFE: If youre still troubled, think of things this way:

Tartuffe, Act IV, Scene 6

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No one shall know our joys, save us alone, And there’s no evil till the act is known; It's scandal, Madam, which makes it an offense, And it’s no sin to sin in confidence. ELMIRE [having coughed once more]: Well, clearly I must do as you require, And yield to your importunate desire. It is apparent, now, that nothing less Will satisfy you, and so I acquiesce. To go so far is much against my will; I’m vexed that it should come to this; but still, Since you are so determined on it, since you Will not allow mere language to convince you, And since you ask for concrete evidence, I See nothing for it, now, but to comply. If this is sinful, if ’'m wrong to do it, So much the worse for him who drove me to it. The fault can surely not be charged to me. TARTUFFE: Madam, the fault is mine, if fault there be,

Ando. ELMIRE: Open the door a little, and peek out; I wouldn't want my husband poking about. TARTUFFE: Why worry about that man? Each day he grows More gullible; one can lead him by the nose. To find us here would fill him with delight, 140

And if he saw the worst, he’d doubt his sight.

ELMIRE: Nevertheless, do step out for a minute

Into the hall, and see that no one’s in it. Scene 6

ORGON [coming out from under the table]: That man’s a perfect monster, I must admit!

I’m simply stunned. I can’t get over it. ELMIRE: What, coming out so soon? How premature! Get back in hiding, and wait until you're sure. Stay till the end, and be convinced completely; We mustn’t stop till things are proved concretely. ORGON: Hell never harbored anything so vicious!

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ELMIRE: Tut, don’t be hasty. Try to be judicious. Wait, and be certain that there’s no mistake. 10 No jumping to conclusions, for Heaven’s sake! [She places orGON behind her, as TARTUFFE re-enters. | Scene 7 TARTUFFE [not seeing ORGON]:

Madam, all things have worked out to perfection; I’ve given the neighboring rooms a full inspection; No one’s about; and now I may at last...

ORGON [intercepting him]: Hold on, my passionate fellow, not so fast! I should advise a little more restraint. Well, so you thought youd fool me, my dear saint! How soon you wearied of the saintly life— Wedding my daughter, and coveting my wife! Pve long suspected you, and had a feeling 10 That soon I'd catch you at your double-dealing. Just now, you've given me evidence galore; It’s quite enough; I have no wish for more. ELMIRE [to TARTUFFE]:

I’m sorry to have treated you so slyly, But circumstances forced me to be wily. TARTUFFE: Brother, you can’t think...

ORGON: No more talk from you; Just leave this household, without more ado.

TARTUFFE: What I intended... ORGON: That seems fairly clear. Spare me your falsehoods and get out of here. TARTUFFE: No, I’m the master, and you're the one to go!

20

This house belongs to me, I'll have you know, And I shall show you that you can’t hurt me By this contemptible conspiracy, That those who cross me know not what they do,

And that I’ve means to expose and punish you, Avenge offended Heaven, and make you grieve That ever you dared order me to leave.

Tartuffe, Act V, Scene 1

Scene 8 ELMIRE: What was the point of all that angry chatter? ORGON: Dear God, I’m worried. This is no laughing matter. ELMIRE: How so?

ORGON: I fear I understood his drift. I'm much disturbed about that deed of gift. ELMIRE: You gave him... ? ORGON: Yes, it’s all been drawn and signed. But one thing more is weighing on my mind. ELMIRE: What’s that? ORGON: I'll tell you; but first let’s see if there’s A certain strong-box in his room upstairs. Act. \, Scene 1 CLEANTE:

Where are you going so fast? ORGON: God knows! CLEANTE:

Then wait;

Let’s have a conference, and deliberate

On how this situation’s to be met. ORGON: That strong-box has me utterly upset; This is the worst of many, many shocks. CLEANTE: Is there some fearful mystery in that box?

ORGON: My poor friend Argas brought that box to me With his own hands, in utmost secrecy; 10

Twas on the very morning of his flight. It’s full of papers which, if they came to light, Would ruin him—or such is my impression.

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CLEANTE:

Then why did you let it out of your possession? ORGON: Those papers vexed my conscience, and it seemed best To ask the counsel of my pious guest. The cunning scoundrel got me to agree To leave the strong-box in his custody, So that, in case of an investigation, I could employ a slight equivocation And swear I didn’t have it, and thereby, 20 At no expense to conscience, tell a lie. CLEANTE: It looks to me as if you're out on a limb. Trusting him with that box, and offering him That deed of gift, were actions of a kind Which scarcely indicate a prudent mind. With two such weapons, he has the upper hand, And since youre vulnerable, as matters stand, You erred once more in bringing him to bay. You should have acted in some subtler way.

PBR him in,Sanat a ee — nough, by God! I’m through w : Wiahoach I'll hate the whole fal \_ And persecute them worse than SRL CLEANTE:

40 Now, to correct that error, must you embrace

An even greater error in its place, And judge our worthy neighbors as a whole By what you've learned of one corrupted soul? Come, just because one rascal made you swallow A show of zeal which turned out to be hollow,

Shall you conclude that all men are deceivers, And that, today, there are no true believers?

oy

a atheists make tel foolish PHU Me —

Tartuffe, Act V, Scene 3

"And cultivate asober m r fraud, but also deni aspe rse

oe

‘As you have done, upon the side of Crus Ga

Scene 2

DAMIS: Father, I hear that scoundrel’s uttered threats

Against you; that he pridefully forgets How, in his need, he was befriended by you, And means to use your gifts to crucify you.

ORGON: It’s true, my boy. I’m too distressed for tears. DAMIS: Leave it to me, Sir; let me trim his ears. Faced with such insolence, we must not waver. I shall rejoice in doing you the favor Of cutting short his life, and your distress. CLEANTE: What a display of young hotheadedness! Do learn to moderate your fits of rage. In this just kingdom, this enlightened age, One does not settle things by violence. Scene 3

MADAME PERNELLE: I hear strange tales of very strange events. ORGON: Yes, strange events which these two eyes beheld.

The man’s ingratitude is unparalleled. I save a wretched pauper from starvation, House him, and treat him like a blood relation,

Shower him every day with my largesse, Give him my daughter, and all that I possess; And meanwhile the unconscionable knave Tries to induce my wife to misbehave; And not content with such extreme rascality,

Now threatens me with my own liberality, And aims, by taking base advantage of The gifts I gave him out of Christian love, To drive me from my house, a ruined man, And make me end a pauper, as he began.

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MOLIERE

DORINE: Poor fellow! MADAME PERNELLE: No, my son, Pll never bring

Myself to think him guilty of such a thing. ORGON: How’s that? MADAME PERNELLE: The righteous always were maligned. ORGON: Speak clearly, Mother. Say what’s on your mind. MADAME PERNELLE: 20

I mean that I can smell a rat, my dear.

You know how everybody hates him, here. ORGON: That has no bearing on the case at all. MADAME PERNELLE: I told you a hundred times, when you were small,

That virtue in this world is hated ever; Malicious men may die, but malice never. ORGON: No doubt that’s true, but how does it apply? MADAME PERNELLE: They've turned you against him by a clever lie. ORGON: [ve told you, I was there and saw it done.

MADAME PERNELLE: Ah, slanderers will stop at nothing, Son.

ORGON: 30

Mother, I'll lose my temper . . . For the last time,

I tell you I was witness to the crime. MADAME PERNELLE: The tongues of spite are busy night and noon, And to their venom no man is immune. ORGON: You're talking nonsense. Can’t you realize I saw it; saw it; saw it with my eyes?

40

Saw, do you understand me? Must I shout it Into your ears before you'll cease to doubt it? MADAME PERNELLE: Appearances can deceive, my son. Dear me, We cannot always judge by what we see. ORGON: Drat! Drat! MADAME PERNELLE: One often interprets things awry;

Tartuffe, Act V, Scene 3

Good can seem evil to a suspicious eye.

ORGON:

Was I to see his pawing at Elmire As an act of charity?

MADAME PERNELLE: Till his guilt is clear, A man deserves the benefit of the doubt. You should have waited, to see how things turned out.

ORGON: Great God in Heaven, what more proof did I need? Was I to sit there, watching, until he'd... You drive me to the brink of impropriety. MADAME PERNELLE: 50

No, no, a man of such surpassing piety Could not do such a thing. You cannot shake me. I don't believe it, and you shall not make me.

ORGON: You vex me so that, if you weren't my mother, Id say to you .. . some dreadful thing or other. DORINE: It’s your turn now, Sir, not to be listened to; Youd not trust us, and now she won't trust you.

CLEANTE: My friends, we’re wasting time which should be spent In facing up to our predicament. I fear that scoundrel’s threats weren’t made in sport.

60

DAMIS: Do you think he’d have the nerve to go to court? ELMIRE: I’m sure he won't: they’d find it all too crude A case of swindling and ingratitude. CLEANTE:

70

Don’t be too sure. He won't be at a loss To give his claims a high and righteous gloss; And clever rogues with far less valid cause Have trapped their victims in a web of laws. I say again that to antagonize A man so strongly armed was most unwise. ORGON: I know it; but the man’s appalling cheek Outraged me so, I couldn’t control my pique. CLEANTE: I wish to Heaven that we could devise Some truce between you, or some compromise. ELMIRE: : If I had known what cards he held, I’'d not

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Have roused his anger by my little plot. ORGON [fo DORINE, ds M. LOYAL enters]:

What is that fellow looking for? Who is he? Go talk to him—and tell him that I’m busy. Scene 4

MONSIEUR LOYAL: Good day, dear sister. Kindly let me see Your master.

DORINE: He’s involved with company, And cannot be disturbed just now, I fear.

MONSIEUR LOYAL: I hate to intrude; but what has brought me here

Will not disturb your master, in any event. Indeed, my news will make him most content.

DORINE: Your name?

MONSIEUR LOYAL: Just say that I bring greetings from Monsieur Tartuffe, on whose behalf I’ve come. DORINE [fo ORGON]:

Sir, he’s a very gracious man, and bears A message from Tartuffe, which, he declares,

Will make you most content. CLEANTE:

Upon my word, I think this man had best be seen, and heard. ORGON: Perhaps he has some settlement to suggest. How shall I treat him? What manner would be best? CLEANTE:

Control your anger, and if he should mention Some fair adjustment, give him your full attention. MONSIEUR LOYAL: Good health to you, good Sir. May Heaven confound Your enemies, and may your joys abound. ORGON [aside, to CLEANTE]: 20

A gentle salutation: it confirms My guess that he is here to offer terms. MONSIEUR LOYAL: [ve always held your family most dear; I served your father, Sir, for many a year. ORGON: Sir, I must ask your pardon; to my shame,

Tartuffe, Act V, Scene 4

I cannot now recall your face or name. MONSIEUR LOYAL: Loyal’s my name; I come from Normandy, And I’m a bailiff, in all modesty.

For forty years, praise God, it’s been my boast To serve with honor in that vital post, 30

40

And I am here, Sir, if you will permit The liberty, to serve you with this writ... ORGON: To— what? MONSIEUR LOYAL: Now, please, Sir, let us have no friction: It’s nothing but an order of eviction. You are to move your goods and family out And make way for new occupants, without Deferment or delay, and give the keys... ORGON: I? Leave this house? MONSIEUR LOYAL: Why yes, Sir, if you please. This house, Sir, from the cellar to the roof, Belongs now to the good Monsieur Tartuffe, And he is lord and master of your estate By virtue of a deed of present date,

Drawn in due form, with clearest legal phrasing... DAMIS: Your insolence is utterly amazing! MONSIEUR LOYAL: Young man, my business here is not with you, But with your wise and temperate father, who,

Like every worthy citizen, stands in awe Of justice, and would never obstruct the law. ORGON: Butea. MONSIEUR LOYAL: Not for a million, Sir, would you rebel Against authority; I know that well. Youll not make trouble, Sir, or interfere 50

With the execution of my duties here. DAMIS: Someone may execute a smart tattoo On that black jacket of yours, before youre through. MONSIEUR LOYAL: Sir, bid your son be silent. I'd much regret Having to mention such a nasty threat

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MOLIERE

Of violence, in writing my report. DORINE [aside]:

This man Loyal’s a most disloyal sort! MONSIEUR LOYAL: I love all men of upright character, And when I agreed to serve these papers, Sir, It was your feelings that I had in mind. 60 I couldn't bear to see the case assigned To someone else, who might esteem you less And so subject you to unpleasantness. ORGON: What’s more unpleasant than telling a man to leave His house and home? MONSIEUR LOYAL: Youd like a short reprieve? If you desire it, Sir, I shall not press you,

70

But wait until tomorrow to dispossess you. Splendid. I'll come and spend the night here, then, Most quietly, with half a score of men. For form’s sake, you might bring me, just before You go to bed, the keys to the front door.

80

Behavior, and will not disturb your rest. But bright and early, Sir, you must be quick And move out all your furniture, every stick: The men I’ve chosen are both young and strong, And with their help it shouldn’t take you long. In short, I'll make things pleasant and convenient, And since I’m being so extremely lenient, Please show me, Sir, a like consideration, And give me your entire cooperation.

My men, I promise, will be on their best

ORGON [aside]:

I may be all but bankrupt, but I vow Vd give a hundred louis, here and now,

Just for the pleasure of landing one good clout Right on the end of that complacent snout. CLEANTE: Careful; don’t make things worse.

DAMIS: My bootsole itches To give that beggar a good kick in the breeches. DORINE: Monsieur Loyal, I’d love to hear the whack

Of a stout stick across your fine broad back.

Tartuffe, Act V, Scene 6

90

MONSIEUR LOYAL: Take care: a woman too may go to jail if She uses threatening language to a bailiff. CLEANTE: Enough, enough, Sir. This must not go on.

Give me that paper, please, and then begone. MONSIEUR LOYAL: Well, au revoir. God give you all good cheer! ORGON: May God confound you, and him who sent you here! Scene 5

ORGON: Now, Mother, was I right or not? This writ Should change your notion of Tartuffe a bit. Do you perceive his villainy at last?

MADAME PERNELLE: I’m thunderstruck. I’m utterly aghast. DORINE: Oh, come, be fair. You mustn’t take offense

At this new proof of his benevolence. He’s acting out of selfless love, I know. Material things enslave the soul, and so

He kindly has arranged your liberation From all that might endanger your salvation. ORGON: Will you not ever hold your tongue, you dunce? CLEANTE: Come, you must take some action, and at once.

ELMIRE: Go tell the world of the low trick he’s tried. The deed of gift is surely nullified By such behavior, and public rage will not Permit the wretch to carry out his plot. Scene 6

VALERE: Sir, though I hate to bring you more bad news, Such is the danger that I cannot choose. A friend who is extremely close to me

And knows my interest in your family Has, for my sake, presumed to violate

The secrecy that’s due to things of state,

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20

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MOLIERE

And sends me word that you are in a plight From which your one salvation lies in flight. That scoundrel who’s imposed upon you so Denounced you to the King an hour ago And, as supporting evidence, displayed The strong-box of a certain renegade Whose secret papers, so he testified, You had disloyally agreed to hide. I don’t know just what charges may be pressed, But there’s a warrant out for your arrest; Tartuffe has been instructed, furthermore, To guide the arresting officer to your door. CLEANTE: He’s clearly done this to facilitate His seizure of your house and your estate. ORGON: That man, I must say, is a vicious beast!

VALERE: Quick, Sir; you mustn’t tarry in the least.

My carriage is outside, to take you hence; This thousand louis should cover all expense. Let’s lose no time, or you shall be undone; The sole defense, in this case, is to run.

I shall go with you all the way, and place you In a safe refuge to which they'll never trace you. ORGON: Alas, dear boy, I wish that I could show you 30

My gratitude for everything I owe you. But now is not the time; I pray the Lord That I may live to give you your reward. Farewell, my dears; be careful...

CLEANTE: Brother, hurry.

We shall take care of things; you needn’t worry. Scene 7

TARTUFFE: Gently, Sir, gently; stay right where you are. No need for haste; your lodging isn’t far. Youre off to prison, by order of the Prince. ORGON: This is the crowning blow, you wretch; and since It means my total ruin and defeat, Your villainy is now at last complete.

Tartuffe, Act V, Scene 7

TARTUFFE: You needn't try to provoke me; it’s no use. Those who serve Heaven must expect abuse.

CLEANTE:

You are indeed most patient, sweet, and blameless.

10

DORINE: How he exploits the name of Heaven! It’s shameless. TARTUFFE: Your taunts and mockeries are all for naught; To do my duty is my only thought. MARIANE: Your love of duty is most meritorious, And what you've done is little short of glorious. TARTUFFE: All deeds are glorious, Madam, which obey The sovereign prince who sent me here today.

ORGON: I rescued you when you were destitute; Have you forgotten that, you thankless brute?

TARTUFFE: No, no, I well remember everything; 20

But my first duty is to serve my King. That obligation is so paramount That other claims, beside it, do not count; And for it I would sacrifice my wife,

My family, my friend, or my own life. ELMIRE: Hypocrite!

DORINE:

30

All that we most revere, he uses To cloak his plots and camouflage his ruses. CLEANTE: If it is true that you are animated By pure and loyal zeal, as you have stated, Why was this zeal not roused until you’d sought To make Orgon a cuckold, and been caught? Why weren't you moved to give your evidence Until your outraged host had driven you hence? I shan’t say that the gift of all his treasure Ought to have damped your zeal in any measure; But if he is a traitor, as you declare,

How could you condescend to be his heir? TARTUEFFE [to the OFFICER]:

Sir, spare me all this clamor; it’s growing shrill. Please carry out your orders, if you will.

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40

POQUELIN

MOLIERE

OFFICER: Yes, I’ve delayed too long, Sir. Thank you kindly. Youre just the proper person to remind me. Come, you are off to join the other boarders In the King’s prison, according to his orders. TARTUFFE: Who I, Sir? OFFICER: Yes:

TARTUFFE: To prison? This can’t be true!

OFFICER: I owe an explanation, but not to you.

[To orGON] Sir, all is well; rest easy, and be grateful. We serve a Prince to whom all sham is hateful, A Prince who sees into our inmost hearts,

50

60

And can't be fooled by any trickster’s arts. His royal soul, though generous and human, Views all things with discernment and acumen; His sovereign reason is not lightly swayed, And all his judgments are discreetly weighed. He honors righteous men of every kind, And yet his zeal for virtue is not blind, Nor does his love of piety numb his wits And make him tolerant of hypocrites. "Twas hardly likely that this man could cozen A King who’s foiled such liars by the dozen. With one keen glance, the King perceived the whole Perverseness and corruption of his soul,

And thus high Heaven’s justice was displayed: Betraying you, the rogue stood self-betrayed. The King soon recognized Tartuffe as one Notorious by another name, who'd done So many vicious crimes that one could fill Ten volumes with them, and be writing still.

But to be brief: our sovereign was appalled By this man’s treachery toward you, which he called The last, worst villainy of a vile career, 70

And bade me follow the impostor here To see how gross his impudence could be,

And force him to restore your property. Your private papers, by the King’s command, I hereby seize and give into your hand. The King, by royal order, invalidates The deed which gave this rascal your estates,

Tartuffe, Act V, Scene 7

And pardons, furthermore, your grave offense

In harboring an exile’s documents. By these decrees, our Prince rewards you for 80

Your loyal deeds in the late civil war, And shows how heartfelt is his satisfaction In recompensing any worthy action, How much he prizes merit, and how he makes More of men’s virtues than of their mistakes. DORINE: Heaven be praised! MADAME PERNELLE: I breathe again, at last. ELMIRE: We're safe. MARIANE: I can’t believe the danger’s past. ORGON [fo TARTUFFE]: Well, traitor, now you see... CLEANTE: Ah, Brother, please,

90

Let’s not descend to such indigniaes. Leave the poor wretch to his unhappy fate, And don’t say anything to aggravate His present woes; but rather hope that he Will soon embrace an honest piety,

And mend his ways, and by a true repentance Move our just King to moderate his sentence. Meanwhile, go kneel before your sovereign’s throne And thank him for the mercies he has shown. ORGON: Well said: let’s go at once and, gladly kneeling, Express the gratitude which all are feeling. Then, when that first great duty has been done, 100

We'll turn with pleasure to a second one, And give Valére, whose love has proven so true,

The wedded happiness which is his due.

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ax

Pu Sonc-Line (P’u SuNG LING) B. CHINA, 1640-1715

poo-song-LING

Pu Song-Ling’s short stories are as well known in China as are those of E. T. A. Hoffmann! in Germany and Edgar Allan Poe’ in the United States. Like Hoffmann and Poe, Pu Song-Ling wrote about the strange and the fantastic; his stories concern ordinary people whose lives somehow come into contact with the supernatural in the form of ghosts, fox spirits, genil, and other uncanny beings. Moreover, like his European and American counterparts, Pu Song-Ling transformed the supernatural tale into a sophisticated art form. His classic collection of 431 tales, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liao-zhai zhi-yi, 1766), influenced the revival of the classical-language story in China and delighted readers. Though their elevated prose style makes them difficult even for Chinese readers, Pu Song-Ling’s stories continue to be praised as classics and—reproduced in other forms and translated into modern Chinese and other languages— to appeal to a wide audience. “Chill and Desolate as a Monastery.” Pu Song-Ling was born in 1640 in Shan-dong (Shantung) province. He lived during the early years of the

ching

Qing (Ching) dynasty (1644-1911), a time of transition when many fami-

lies of the gentry, including Pu Song-Ling’s own, were disenfranchised, as power shifted hands to the new Manchu rulers. In a brief autobiographical record, Pu Song-Ling describes himself as thin and of poor health and says that his father’s home was “chill and desolate as a monastery.” Although he received a solid classical education and passed the first stage of his examinations, Pu Song-Ling failed the provincial civil service exam at least twice. Unable to gain access to a government position, he remained in his native province of Shan-dong, teaching, collecting tales, and writing. He worked for some time as a personal secretary and then as a private tutor to a prominent family, from 1672 to 1710.

Ria

For more

information about Pu Song-Ling and a quiz on “The Mural,” see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

An ardent collector of classical and popular stories, Pu Song-Ling might be considered a folklorist who listened attentively to the tales circulating among the people of Shan-dong. Apparently he began writing early in life, but the first version of Strange Tales did not appear until 1679, when Pu Song-Ling was almost forty years old. The compendium first circulated in manuscript form only, for Pu Song-Ling could not afford to have it printed. Over the years he continued to add to and revise the tales; in the meantime he wrote a novel, three plays, poetry, and lyrics to be sung to popular tunes. In 1710, when Pu Song-Ling was seventy years old, he was given an official post as a senior licentiate because of his literary

'E. T. A. Hoffmann

(1776-1822): German Romantic writer of supernatural and fantastic tales such as “The

Sandman” and “The Mines of Falun,” published in the early nineteenth century. ? Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849): This nineteenth-century American writer produced classic suspense tales such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Telltale Heart.”

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fh ee

Pu Song-Ling, 1640-1715 Pu Song-Ling, Page

from Liao-zhaizhi-yi

(University of Wisconsin-Madison Library)

reputation. Pu Song-Ling died a short time later, in 1715; the final version

of Strange Tales was published posthumously in 1766.

Short Fiction in the Early Qing. The final century of the Ming dynasty” and the early years of the Qing dynasty, when Pu Song-Ling lived, coincided with an increase in the production of VERNACULAR FICTION. As with the rise of the European Novel, the popularity of vernacular fiction in China was partly the result of the prosperity of the urban middle classes, who were drawn to the short story, the novel, and popular theater as forms of diversion and entertainment. Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (also translated as Strange Tales or Uncanny Stories from a Scholar’s Studio) are portraits of everyday life, but ones in which the characters inevitably brush up against the supernatural in the form of ghosts, fox spirits, immortals, and other beings. Pu Song-Ling wrote his stories in a refined, “old style” prose that imitated classical styles dating back to the Confucianism, and an 3Ming dynasty (1368-1644): A blossoming of Chinese culture, the restoration of c of this period. characteristi are novel, the elevation of the arts, including porcelain, architecture, drama, and

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PU SONG-LING

One striking differ-

Western

Han era (206 B.c.E.— 8 C.£.). When

his collection was first

ence between many

printed, classical supernatural stories were accompanied by extensive

of Pu Song-Ling’s lit-

annotations and critical commentaries.

erary ghost stories and their Western

counterparts is the frequent under-

current of whimsy and humor, found

precisely in the conjunction of the ordi-

nary and the supernatural, the domestic and demonic. — STEPHEN OweN,

An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911, 1996

After committing overheard popStrange Stories froma Chinese Studio. would polish them into a new Song-Ling Pu memory, ular stories to form. Of his own storytelling abilities, Pu Song-Ling wrote, My talents are not those of Kan Pao, elegant explorer of the records of the Gods; I am rather animated by the spirit of Su Tung-p’o," who loved to hear men speak of the supernatural. I get people to commit what they tell me to writing, and subsequently I dress it up in the form of a story; and thus, in the lapse of time my friends from all quarters have supplied me with quantities of material, which, from my habit of collecting, has grown into a vast pile.

His self-assessment notwithstanding, Pu Song-Ling’s reputation as a great writer rests not on his abilities as a listener and collector but on his fine prose styling by which he transformed the stories he heard into works of art. Indeed, while Chinese critics appreciate the wit and irony of Pu SongLing’s stories, they single out for praise their elevated style. Pu Song-Ling was a meticulous artist who honed and polished his stories until they met all the formal requirements of classic Chinese prose style—simplicity, invention, innovation, and density of allusions. Unfortunately, the apparent simplicity of these tales in translation doesn’t do justice to Pu SongLing’s perfection of this complex prose form. Whereas earlier Chinese tales of the supernatural take for granted a belief in spirits and magical powers, Pu Song-Ling’s stories demonstrate a somewhat unique treatment of the otherworldly. In stories such as “The Wise Neighbor,’ spirits embody human attributes and interact with human characters in ways more “natural” than supernatural. Moreover, as Stephen Owen has noted, there is often an “undercurrent of whimsy and humor” when the ordinary characters recognize the appearance of the supernatural in their world. As Owen puts it, “At the very moment that the supernatural reveals itself in the ordinary world, . . . the strange has become ordinary.” “The Mural” takes its readers into a kind of dreamscape that confounds the divide between illusion and reality. Here Chu, the master of letters, gazes into a mural depicting heavenly maidens scattering flowers and becomes so mesmerized by one of the figures that he is transported into another world. Chu encounters a female apparition whose existence may be illusory. Yet the characters seem to be physically present in, or incorporated into, the world of the “illusion,” further confusing the

boundary between reality and imagination. B FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography

Giles, Herbert A. A History of Chinese Literature. 1901; rpt. 1967. ——., trans. Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. 1925.

*Kan Pao: Fourth-century author of a thirty-volume work called Supernatural Researches. Su Tung-p’o: Poet and essayist from the tenth century.

The Mural Criticism

Chang, Chun-shu. Redefining History: Ghosts, Spirits, and Human Society in Péu Sungling’s World, 1640-1715. 1998. Owen, Stephen, ed. Introduction to Pu Song-ling in An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911. 1996.

Zeitlin, Judith T. Historian of the Strange: Pu Songling and the Chinese Classical Tale. 1993. B@ PRONUNCIATION

Pao-chih: bow-JUR Pu Song-Ling: poo-song-LING Qing: ching

Qw

The Mural Translated by Denis C. Mair and Victor H. Mair

While staying in the capital, Meng Lung-t’an of Kiangsi and Master of Letters Chu once happened upon a monastery. Neither the shrine-hall nor the meditation room was very spacious, and only one old monk was found putting up within. Seeing the guests enter, the monk straightened up his clothes, went to greet them, and showed them around the place. An image of Zen Master Pao-chih’ stood in the shrine-hall. On either side-wall were painted fine murals with lifelike human figures. The east wall depicted the Buddhist legend of “Heavenly Maidens Scattering Flowers.” Among the figures was a young girl with flowing hair with a flower in her hand and a faint smile on her face. Her cherry-red lips were on the verge of moving, and the liquid pools of her eyes seemed to stir with wavelike glances. After gazing intently for some time, Chu’s self-possession began to waver, and his thoughts grew so abstracted that he fell into a trance. His body went adrift as if floating on mist; suddenly he was inside the mural. Peak upon peak of palaces and pavilions made him feel as if he was beyond this earth. An old monk was preaching the Dharma’ on a dais, around which stood a large crowd of viewers in robes with their right shoulders bared out of respect. Chu mingled in among them. Before long, he felt someone tugging furtively at his sleeve. He turned to look, and there was the girl with flowing hair giving him a dazzling smile. She tripped abruptly away, and he lost no time following her along a winding walkway into a small chamber. Once there, he hesitated to approach any farther. When she turned her head and raised the flower with a beckoning motion, he went across to her in the quiet, deserted chamber. Swiftly he embraced her and, as she did not put up much resistance, they

and Southern (420-589) 1pao-chih: Pao zhi; a legendary monk from the era of the Northern (386-581)

dynasties.

;

universe. 2 Dharma: In Buddhism, the truth that reflects the moral law of the

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grew intimate. When it was over she told him not to make a sound and left, closing the door behind her. That night she came again. After two days of this, the girl's companions realized what was happening and searched together until they found the scholar. “A little gentleman is already growing in your belly, but still you wear those flowing tresses, pretending to be a maiden,” they said teasingly. Holding out hairpins and earrings, they pressured her to put her hair up in the coiled knot of a married woman, which she did in silent embarrassment. One of the girls said, “Sisters, let’s not outstay our welcome.” At this the group left all in a titter. Looking at the soft, cloudlike chignon piled atop her head and her phoenix ringlets curved low before her ears, the scholar was more struck by her charms than when she had worn her hair long. Seeing that no one was around, he began to make free with her. His heart throbbed at her musky fragrance but, before they had quite finished their pleasure, the heavy tread of leather boots was heard. A clanking of chains and manacles was followed by clamorous, arguing voices. The girl got up in alarm. Peering out, they saw an officer dressed in armor, his face black as lacquer, with chains in one hand and a mace in the other. Standing around him were all the maidens. “Is this all of you?” asked the officer. “We're all here,” they answered. “Report if any of you are concealing a man from the lower world. Don’t bring trouble on yourselves.” “We aren't,” said the maidens in unison. The officer turned around and looked

malevolently in the direction of the chamber, giving every appearance of an intention to search it. The girl’s face turned pale as ashes in fear. “Quick, hide under the bed,” she told Chu in panic. She opened a little door in the wall and was gone in an instant. Chu lay prostrate, hardly daring to take a little breath. Soon he heard the sound of boots stumping into, then back out of, the room. Before long, the din of voices gradually receded. He regained some composure, though the sound of passersby discussing the matter could be heard frequently outside the door. After cringing there for quite some time, he heard ringing in his ears and felt a burning ache in his eyes. Though the intensity of these sensations threatened to overwhelm him, there was no choice but to listen quietly for the girl’s return. He was reduced to the point that he no longer recalled where he had been before coming here. Just then his friend Meng Lung-t’an, who had been standing in the shrine-hall, found that Chu had disappeared in the blink of an eye. Perplexed, he asked the monk what had happened. “He has gone to hear a sermon on the Dharma,” said the monk laughingly. “Where?” asked Meng. “Not far,” was the answer. After a moment, the monk tapped on the wall with his finger and called, “Why do you tarry so long, my good patron?” Presently there appeared on the wall an image of Chu standing motionless with his head cocked to one side as if listening to something. “You have kept your traveling companion waiting a long time,” called the monk again. Thereupon he drifted out of the mural and down to the floor. He stood woodenly, his mind

like burned-out ashes, with eyes staring straight ahead and legs wobbling. Meng was terribly frightened, but in time calmed down enough to ask what had happened. It turned out that Chu had been hiding under the bed when he heard a thunderous knocking, so he came out of the room to listen for the source of the sound.

They looked at the girl holding the flower and saw, instead of flowing hair, a high coiled chignon on her head. Chu bowed down to the old monk in amazement and

The Mural

asked the reason for this. “Illusion is born in the mind. How can a poor mendicant like myself explain it?” laughed the monk. Chu was dispirited and cast down; Meng was shaken and confused. Together they walked down the shrine-hall steps and left. The Chronicler of the Tales comments: “‘Illusion is born in the mind? These sound like the words of one who has found the truth. A wanton mind gives rise to visions of lustfulness. The mind dominated by lust gives rise to a state of fear. The Bodhisattva made it possible for ignorant persons to attain realization for themselves. All the myriad transformations of illusion are nothing but the movements of the human mind itself. The old monk spoke in earnest solicitude, but regrettably there is no sign that the youth found enlightenment in his words and entered the mountains with hair unbound to seek the truth.”

retu rns to hel p i Buddhahood, but out of compassion 1 iyi who attained 3 Bodhisattva: A reference to Guanshiyin, those who are suffering.

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TEXT

IN CONTEXT

Matsuo Basho, Narrow Road through the Backcountry 131 TIME AND PLACE: Eighteenth-Century Japan:

Genroku Period 124 map: Basho’s Journeys, 1684-1689

127

Travel and Cultural Encounter

ay

156

Matsuo BASHO B. JAPAN, 1644-1694 In the last months of his life, Matsuo Basho handed a poem to one of his numerous students: Do not copy me— do not be like a cantaloupe cut into halves.

Basho

This portrait on a scroll depicts an elderly Basho,

weathered from his years of traveling.

[Itsuo Museum, Osaka]

122

This advice was not easy to follow. Although Basho did not invent the short poetic form known today as haiku, he mastered the form by broadening its emotional and thematic possibilities; in effect, Basho’s became the standard by which all later haiku were measured. And to serious admirers, Basho is much more than an expert poet; long after his death, he is regarded as a sage or a religious teacher. Basho led a simple, almost monastic life. He was often withdrawn from society and available only to a few disciples and other poets. These characteristics earned him the title “saint of haiku.” Published eight years after his death, Basho’s most famous work, Narrow Road through the Backcountry (Oku-no-hosomichi) could be classified as travel literature, but it recounts journeys that are totally different from those of travelers such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu or fictional travelers such as Candide and Lemuel Gulliver. Basho’s journeys are best characterized as pilgrimages to natural and artificial : { shrines, where he experiences the connections or relationships among places, their histories, previous visitors, friends, and himself. Bash6 uses brief poems and carefully written prose to capture intimate moments of coalescence. These passages are like a series of photographs in which

Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694

the camera points both outward and inward, bringing the two dimensions together —the poet in the place. In Narrow Road through the Backcountry, Bash6 shows his mastery of the poetic travel diary. Dating from the Heian period (794-1185), the travel diary or haibun developed into a sophisticated art form, wherein writers sought not to describe the places, people, and events they experienced but to give artistic shape to their journey and evoke a sense of the emotional resonance and philosophical significance. In the earliest travel diaries such as The Tosa Diary (tenth century), waka, five-line poems consisting of thirty-one syllables (mora) distributed in a pattern of 5—7-5—7-7, were interspersed among prose passages. The master of waka was Saigyo (twelfth century), who wrote waka about the deep connection between humans and nature. Eventually, renga, or “linked verse,’ poetry was adapted in travel diaries. Developing from the thirteenth century, renga was a genre of collaborative poetry composed by two or more writers who alternated three- and two-line stanzas to form poetic sequences of up to one-hundred stanzas. The crucial opening verse, the hokku (5-7-5 syllables), was often

composed so that it could stand alone—the origin of what today is called haiku. Renga, which grew out of Japanese court culture, was characterized by elevated language, serious tone, and elegant style. By Basho’s time, the high seriousness of renga had given way to a new style of linked verse, haikai no renga, which brought a more playful tone and more commonplace subjects. Haikai—hai meaning “play”; kai meaning “friendly exchange” —was a kind of liberated renga featuring popular, even vulgar, topics and often containing fewer than the typical onehundred stanzas common to renga. Under Basho’s influence, haikat found a middle ground between elegance and vulgarity, and the introductory hokku gained a kind of independent status that gave rise to the three-line haiku, which eventually replaced haikai. The combining of haikai and prose in travel diaries during the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) was called haibun, meaning haikai prose or haikai

literature.

| www |Fora quiz on Narrow Road

through the Backcountry, see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

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= fh

= TIME

AND

= PLACE

Eighteenth-Century Japan: Genroku Period Between 1688 and 1704 Japan experienced a

fiction writer of the time, using colloquial lan-

cultural renaissance in literature and the arts,

guage to transform the Japanese novel into a realistic story that focused on the loves and lives of artisans and merchants. Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) recast haikai, or linked verse, into personal expression, conveying a direct sense of nature and a spirit of reverie. Scholarship, too, blossomed during this time. Philosophers such as Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) and Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725) redirected Japanese thought from metaphysics toward a more empirical study of philology, linguistics, history, ethics, and politics. Overall, the Genroku period was a reflection of the society that had emerged in the first century of the Tokugawa era, and it left a lasting mark on Japanese literature, culture, and sensibility.

brought on in part by the power and wealth of the chonin, or merchant classes, whose secular

values inspired a new aesthetic. Known as the Genroku period, this moment of cultural creativity was centered in the cities of Edo, Japan’s capital; Kyoto; and Osaka, the premier commercial city. The cultural revival was marked by a turn toward popular forms that exploited new developments in woodblock printing and that plumbed the everyday lives of the artisans, merchants, bankers, courte-

sans, and actors who frequented the licensed districts, or pleasure quarters. During Genroku, the transitory pleasures of the “floating world” were a dominating influence. Painters, woodblock printers, dramatists, and fiction writers were eager to satisfy the tastes and reflect the values of the thriving townspeople. In painting, Ogata Korin (1658-1716) moved away from conventional, Chinese-inspired scenes and depicted the lives of chonin, as did the woodblock printer Utamoro (1754-1806). In drama, Chikamatsu Monzaemon

(1653-1724) transformed the joruri, or popular puppet theater, becoming one of the first writers in the world to focus on the domestic and personal tragedies of common people. His sewamono, or domestic plays, often dramatized actual incidents that had taken place in Kyoto or Edo; like Goethe’s immensely popular novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), which set offa series of imitation suicides in late-eighteenth-century Germany, Chikamatsu’s shinju plays were so widely influential that the government banned their performance in order to stem the growing number ofimitation suicides in Japan. Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) became the leading popular

H. Suzuki, Sprigging a Plum Tree,c.1755 —This woodcut depicts two pleasure-seekers of the floating world of the

Genroku period. (The Art Archive/ Eileen Tweedy)

Matsuo Bash6, 1644-1694

Choosing a Life of Poetry. Matsuo Bashé was born in 1644 in the town of Ueno, southeast of Kyoto. The son of a minor samurai serving the ruling Todo family, Matsuo Munefusa, later known as Basho, seemed destined to follow his father’s footsteps. When he was nine, Basho became an attendant to the Todo family, serving primarily as a companion to Yoshitada, the eleven-year-old heir. For nearly thirteen years, Basho and Yoshitada were constant companions and friends, and as part of their training they studied linked verse under a local master. When Yoshitada died in 1666, Bashé, now twenty-three years old, broke away from his duties to the Todo family and went to Kyoto where he continued his studies of poetry, calligraphy, and the classics. When Basho returned to his hometown of Ueno in 1671, he published an anthology of poetry entitled The Seashell Game (Kai Oi). The next year he moved to Edo (Tokyo), a young, thriving city. Changing his pen name from Sobo to Tosei, Basho became associated with Soin (1605-1682), a master poet, who taught him the importance of writing about ordinary life. Basho’s work began to appear in numerous anthologies, and disciples gathered around him. In 1680 they built him a house and presented him with a young Japanese banana tree, a bashé, which provided a name for his house and eventually a new pen name. Before Basho, haiku were stiff and formalized, encumbered with rules. Bashé opened up new possibilities for the form, using simple images and making clear associations between the concrete and the abstract. Basho advised his followers: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.” With the priest Buccho, Bash6 studied Zen Buddhism,’ which has its roots in DaotsM as well as traditional BuDDHIsM, and his perception of the world began to change. Nobuyuki Yuasa translates Basho’s description of his new awareness: “What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.”

BAH-shoh o0o0-EH-noh

In 1684, Basho went on his first major The Famous Frog Haiku. journey, to a region southwest of Edo; his account of it, which included prose and poetry, was published as The Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton. After his return to Edo, his poems continued to be published tion and enlightenment. The ulti1Zen Buddhism: Originating in sixth-century China, its goals are self-realiza caused by one’s intellect are mate goal is an indefinable moment of consciousness in which the contradictions nt. enlightenme of moment unity—a transcended in an experience of cosmic

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in anthologies; his most famous poem appeared in the collection Frog Contest (Kawazu Awase) in 1686.

Furu ike ya Kawazu tobikomu Mizu no oto

Ancient pond Frog jumps in— Sound of water.

Although a technical definition of haiku stipulates a three-line stanza with alternating 5-7-5 syllables in the lines, it is not always possible to translate Japanese into English and retain the syllable count. The translation above has fewer syllables than the Japanese original; some translators even add more syllables and lines, adding articles and linking words to accommodate Western — English-speaking — readers. Such readers may be unfamiliar with the lean flashes of reality in haiku. The Japanese original is, however, a model haiku; the first line sets the scene in nature, and the last two lines suggest an instant insight or new perspective. On a first reading, the poet seems to be describing an objective scene with a simple literal meaning: One can imagine sitting by a pond in absolute quiet and then hearing the sound of a frog plopping into the water and perhaps seeing the ripples resonate outward in broad, ever-widening circles. But without stretching the situation at all, one can also easily make the connection between the pond and the poet’s consciousness, and a moment when the sound of water resonates within the psyche, bringing a rich focus to the poet’s attention, connecting the internal with the external. No philosophy, no psychology, just a brief look at a moment of connection. His followers could find in him almost anything they

sought —a town

dandy, a youthful dreamer, a Buddhist recluse, a lonely wanderer, a nihilistic mis-

anthrope, a happy humorist, an enlight-

ened sage. — Makoto UeEDa,

literary historian and scholar, 1970

On the Road Again. Bashd’s second major journey, in 1688, which followed the same route as his first, resulted in two works, Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel and A Visit to Sarashina Village. Through experience, Basho was learning how to balance prose with poetry; his message was becoming clearer, as witnessed by a passage in Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel: “All who have achieved real excellence in any art, possess one thing in common, that is, a mind to obey nature, to be one with nature, throughout the four seasons of the year. Whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams of is the moon.” In Narrow Road through the Backcountry, Bash6 records his third major journey, which was begun in the spring of 1689 and lasted more than two years. Before leaving Edo at the age of forty-five, he sold his

Matsuo Bash, 1644-1694

127

house, suggesting that he did not expect to return. More than the previous two journeys, this one was a culminating pilgrimage and reflects his mature vision of the meaning of life. Back once again in Edo, he spent four years writing and revising the work, which was first published, posthumously, in 1702. In the spring of 1694, at the age of fifty, Basho began his final journey to the south of Japan. En route, he became sick and died. Narrow Road through the Backcountry. Basho’s Narrow Road through the Backcountry, a great masterpiece of haibun and one of the most well-known works of Japanese literature, was begun after Basho returned from his journey in 1689. Polishing his work until his death in 1689 (it was not published until 1702), Basho drew upon and transformed the themes and styles of the earlier haibun into a high form of self-conscious literary art. Indeed, his journey, which follows in part the steps of the medieval monk—poet Saigyo (1118-1190), seems to have been inspired by the desire to commemorate the anniversary of that poet’s death and to find inspiration from the places associated with Bash6’s Journeys, 0 0

50 250

1684-1689

100 miles

Matsuo Basho covered much of

500 kilometers

north-central Japan

in his travels, which he documented in his famous haikai. This map covers his journey through the backcountry, 1689.

Kisakata »

Sakata @)

Sea

of Japan

Shitomae

Matsushima

Shirakawa

dais:

:

Flonshu — ashino Muro-No-Yashima

Pra C IFC OG EFAEN,

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Bash6 is said to have

had more than two thousand students at the time of his death.

If this number is

MATSUO

BASHO

Saigyo. As Donald Keene has noted, “Basho’s main purpose seems to have been to renew his art by direct contact with sites that had inspired the poets of the past” —mountains, shrines, barrier gates, villages, rivers, and other places that were layered with literary, historical, and spiritual resonances. In a mixture of biography and fiction, prose and poetry, Basho describes visits to temples, historical shrines, poet friends, and intensely beautiful vistas. He passes through gates, climbs mountains, and looks at the moon. He is on a religious pilgrimage that is best described in Zen Buddhist terms. He is not looking for some kind of salvation but for moments of consciousness in which he closely identifies with the scene at hand in what might be called “mystical identification” with the outside world, the flow of reality. At the outset of the pilgrimage, Basho is nervous, filled with anxiety. Careful preparations have to be made. Travel was difficult at that time, even dangerous, and his destination was a relatively unexplored portion of Japan—a fine symbol of the areas of consciousness that he expects to open up and engage. Each passage through a barrier gate represents another stage in Basho’s quest. The experience of the first, the Shirakawa Barrier, is captured by Basho’s travel companion, Sora, who describes the change of clothes that was part of the rite of passage through the gate. Many of the famous shrines on Bash0’s itinerary, like the Islands of Matsushima, have been celebrated in other literary works, but it is characteristic of Basho that, even at such sacred sites he often makes a direct connection with ordinary reality using ordinary, everyday objects and subjects.

debatable, there is

no question about his position: Few

Japanese poets have enjoyed so high and so lasting a reputation. — Makoto UEDA

autumn frost all hands busy with melons and eggplants

In Basho’s work, a simple or seemingly insignificant thing often becomes the lightning rod for a Zen experience. At the Tada Shrine, a samurai’s helmet evokes several meanings of loss associated with past dynasties and wars. But the ultimate and final loss — death itself —is evoked by the chirp of a cricket under the helmet, suggesting the living person who once wore the helmet but now is dead. “such a tragic fate” the captain’s helmet shelters ... Just a cricket now

Making an Emotional Connection. If Basho can capture a moment of connection in a brief poem, then it is possible that his reader may

Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694

have a similar experience reading the poem. The poem does not appeal to the intellect; it does not explain in logical terms how the world is connected. Rather the poem speaks to the intuition or the imagination, which can immediately grasp the association. Basho is particularly famous for invoking a quality called sabi to link the lines and images of verses; sabi is an atmosphere of sadness and loneliness from the past that colors the present, as in the following: lonelier even than Suma Beach —this autumn shore in each wave

a swirl of churning shells & broken clover bits

Pilgrimages were often not simply a matter of visiting a shrine, but visiting it at the right time of year or during a full moon. Toward the end of his journey, Basho passes through the Uguisu Barrier, crosses a mountain pass, and arrives at an inn whose host advises him to take advantage of the moonlight at the Mydjin shrine at Kei. Basho prepares the reader for the shrine in prose: “There seemed a certain unearthly air about the place in the night silence, with moonlight through the pines turning the white sand before the stone shrine to frost.” In the past, an abbot had started a tradition of carrying sand into the shrine area for the comfort of worshipers; Basho’s haiku makes this connection. moon illumined— sand carrying pilgrims to sand-carrying shrine

The light of the moon reflecting on the sand is analogous to the poet’s imagination or consciousness fully participating in the sacredness of that shrine, a kind of climax for Basho’s journey. Basho has had a continuing influence in Japan. Early in the twentieth century, when Japanese writers admired Western Romantic writers such as Wordsworth, Goethe, and Hoffmann,’ they considered Bash6 a Japanese Romantic. When French symbolist poets such as Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Verlaine® became the vogue in Japan, Basho was made a Romantic poet who 2Wordsworth, Goethe, and Hoffmann: William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was an English figures, wrote wrote intimately about nature. Goethe (1749-1832), one of the greatest of all German literary T. A. Hoffmann E. (1774). Werther Young of Sorrows The including novels, several and drama, Faust, a poetic

nature. (1776-1822) was a German writer and composer who described the fantastic depths of

Mallarmé (1842-1898), and 3 Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Verlaine: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), Stéphane

in their poetry. Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) were French poets who sought exotic or eccentric moments

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BASHO

symbolist as well, with his deep appreciation for the connection of all things. Basho and haiku were largely discovered at the turn of the century by Westerners. The exquisitely lean poem appealed particularly to British and American imagist poets such as Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and William Carlos Williams.’ Today haiku is well known throughout the United States and Europe. @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography Yamamoto, Kenkichi. Bashd. 1957. Makoto Ueda, Matsuo Basho. 1970.

Historical Background Blyth, R. H. Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics. 1960. Henderson, Harold G. An Introduction to Haiku. 1958. Kato, Shuichi. A History ofJapanese Literature. 1997. Keene, Donald. Anthology ofJapanese Literature. 1955.

Miner, Earl. Japanese Linked Poetry: An Account with Translations of Renga and Haikai Sequences. 1979.

Suzuki, D. T. Zen and Japanese Culture. 1970. See especially Chapter VII, “Zen and Haiku.” Criticism

Aitken, Robert. A Zen Wave: Basho’s Haiku and Zen. 1978; 2003.

Kerkham, Eleanor, ed. Matsuo Bashd’s Poetic Spaces: Exploring Haikai Intersections. 2006.

Miner, Earl. Naming Properties: Nominal References in Travel Writings by Basho and Sora, Johnson and Boswell. 1996. Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho. 1998.

Ueda, Makoto. Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. 1995. B@ PRONUNCIATION

Basho: BAH-shoh Genroku: gen-ROH-koo Hiraizumi: hee-righ-ZOO-mee lizuka: ee-ee-ZOO-kah Muro-No-Yashima: MOO-roh noh YAH-shi-mah Myozenji: myoh-ZEN-jee renga: RENG-gah Ryushakuji: ryoo-shah-KOO-jee Saigyo: SIGH-gyoh Tsukinowa: tski- NOH-wah (tsoo-ki-NOH-wah) Tsutsujigaoka: tsoots-jee-gah-OH-kah (tsoo-tsoo-jee-gah-OH-kah) Ueno: 00-EH-noh Yanaka: yah-NAH-kah Yoichi: yoh-EE-chee

‘Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and William Carlos Williams: Pound (1885-1972), Lowell (1874-1925), and Williams (1883-1963) were American poets who, in addition to writing longer poems, composed short, com-

pact poems that are like photographic moments.

Narrow Road through the Backcountry

Cw

Narrow Road through the Backcountry Translated by Richard Bodner

Sun and moon’ are constant travelers, days and months without end, even across generations. Years, too, come and go with the seasons. And for those who float their lives away on ships or grow bent with age before horses carrying freight from place to place, home itself becomes the open road. Some famous wanderers even passed away while traveling. At some point, whenever it was, drifting clouds drew forth my own urge to wander. After roaming nearby seashores last fall, I returned to my riverside cottage just in time to sweep cobwebs away for the new year, when spring mists rising from rice fields woke my old longing to pass beyond the barrier-gate at Shirakawa into the far backcountry, and I could turn my mind to nothing but beckoning trails. As if possessed, I mended my trousers, tied a new cord to my hat, burned “moxa”* for leg strength, and dréamed of a full moon over Matsushima in the Pine Islands. Then I left my grass-topped hut for good, to stay at Sampu’s guesthouse until setting out. from thatched cottage door into a new world turning

at dolls’ festival’ — opener of an eight-verse “front fold” (first page) of linked poetry’ left on the post on my way out. Under the Seedling Moon,’ by then a pale thin thread still waning, we set out in the misty faint light of dawn, with distant Fuji summit and blooming cherry trees of Ueno and Yanaka barely visible. Would I ever see these again, I wondered? Friends

who'd gathered the night before boarded the boat to come along as far as Senju

A note on the translation: The text reprinted here (dedicated to Robert Aitken, retired roshi of the Diamond Sangha, for a lifetime of “bringing Basho across”) is from Bodner’s Backcountry Trails: A Poet’s Journey (Dragon Mountain Translation Society, 2007), with notes specially adapted for this anthology.

1Sun and moon: An old expression for “days and months,’ as found in earlier poems. 2&t thee int

HWIN-ims

p. 302

(Courtesy

Trustees of the

Final Voyage. The final voyage is the most troubling. It takes Gulliver to the country of the Houyhnhnms, supremely rational horses, and their nasty-tempered draft-animals, the human-looking Yahoos. The tempered judgment, orderly society, and well-mannered behavior of the Houyhnhnms contrast with the irrationality, social disorder, and contemptble behavior of the Yahoos. The stately form of the well-groomed Houyhnhnms, a sign of their superior stature, sets them apart from the disgusting, filthy, and unkempt Yahoos. Swift's depiction of the Yahoos as grotesque caricatures of human beings elicits an intellectual as well as a bodily response from his readers. Like Gulliver, while readers may admire the Houyhnhnms and see, at least at first, their temperate rationality as a model for human behavior, they cannot help but recognize their grosser, more vicious potentials in the Yahoos. Like Gulliver, readers may want to deny that resemblance, but the text, like the Houyhnhnm master who reminds Gulliver of his apparent Kinship with the Yahoos, insists upon that identity. Houyhnhnm society is arguably in some ways an improvement over European ones. Free as it is from all dissent, shock, excess, greed, pride, and grief, it is a sort of utopia, but like Candide’s Eldorado, it is not quite ideal, in that normal human beings would have a difficult time submitting to a lifetime of Houyhnhnmland’s bland conformity. The upper-class equine citizens graze together in unending amiability, conversing about the virtues of friendship and benevolence. Their lives are supported by the work of their own Houyhnhnm servant-class. Those with white, sorrel, and gray coats are said to be “naturally” the inferiors of bay, black, and dapple-gray

Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745

Houyhnhnms, and everyone accepts the rules; there are no rebels here. The catch is that, for good or ill, human beings are not Houyhnhnms: They possess feelings as well as reason. If human beings are not Houyhnhnms, neither are they Yahoos, although they have the capaci ty to soar as high and sink as low as those two creatures. Some readers believ e that the Yahoos are a reflection of Swift’s own hatred of people. Swift admit ted to hating “all nations, professions, and communities,” but said that he loved individuals. What Gulliver’s Travels would show, according to Swift, was that the being so-called “animal rationale ... would only be rationis capax” ; that is, human beings, often called the rational animal, seldom realize their capaci ty to reason. Nonetheless, Gulliver’s contempt for others, including membe rs of his own family and the generous Pedro de Mendez after his return home, leaves the question of Swift’s own views open for discussion. Houyhnhnms. The Houyhnhnms cannot be read as simple allegorical figures for the good of human reason. The rigid order of their society, which includes discrimination within their own ranks as well as an utter abhorrence for and enslavement of the Yahoos, is not a model of the perfect society, as some readers may think. Gulliver, always easily impressed, is totally won to the horses? way of life, and desperately disassociates himself from the Yahoos. His voice takes on a whinnying note and his gait is a modified trot, in imitation of his idols. Gulliver thinks of himself and the Houyhnhnms as Us, the Yahoos as Them. Exiled from the land, he embarks in a boat caulked with Yahoo tallow whose sails are fashioned from tanned Yahoo skins, and he troubles himself no more than the Houyhnhnms about Yahoo genocide. Later, he

is disgusted by the very sight of the generous captain who rescues him, and once back home he is only by degrees able to bear the company of his own family, preferring to be with his carriage horses. Perhaps the final indictment is that people are capable of such mad egotism as Gulliver displays at the end, sitting smug and deluded in his darkened stable.

@ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography Ehrenpreis, Irvin. The Personality ofJonathan Swift. 1958. . Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age. 1962.

Nokes, David. Jonathan Swift, A Hypocrite Reversed: A Critical Biography. 1985. Criticism Bloom, Harold, ed. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. 1996. Flynn, Carol Houlihan. The Body in Swift and Defoe. 1990.

Fox, Christopher. The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift. 2003. Palmeri, Frank, ed. Critical Essays on Jonathan Swift. 1993. Rawson, Claude Julien, ed. Swift: A Collection of Critical Essays. 1994.

Wood, Nigel, ed. Jonathan Swift. 1999. Zimmerman, Everett. Swift’s Narrative Satires: Author and Authority. 1983. @ PRONUNCIATION

Houyhnhnms: HWIN-ims

231

| have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities,

and all my love is toward individuals; for instance, | hate

the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor

Such-a-one, Judge Such-a one; for so

with physicians, . . . soldiers, English,

Scotch, French, and

the rest. But principally | hate and detest that animal called man, although

| heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and

so forth. — JONATHAN Swirt,

Letter to Alexander Pope, 1725

232

JONATHAN

Cw

SWIFT

Gulliver’s Travels PART IV

A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS'

CuapTER 1. The Author sets out as Captain of a ship. His men conspire against him, confine him a long time to his cabin, set him on shore in an unknown land. He travels up into the country. The Yahoos, a strange sort of animal, described. The Author meets two Houyhnhnms. I continued at home with my wife and children about five months in a very happy condition, if I could have learned the lesson of knowing when I was well. I left my poor wife big with child, and accepted an advantageous offer made me to be Captain of the Adventurer, a stout merchantman of 350 tons: for I understood navigation

well, and being grown weary of a surgeon’s employment at sea, which however | could exercise upon occasion, I took a skilful young man of that calling, one Robert Purefoy, into my ship. We set sail from Portsmouth upon the seventh day of September, 1710; on the fourteenth we met with Captain Pocock of Bristol, at Teneriffe,’

who was going to the bay of Campechy,” to cut logwood. On the sixteenth, he was parted from us by a storm; I heard since my return, that his ship foundered, and none escaped but one cabin boy. He was an honest man, and a good sailor, but a little too positive in his own opinions, which was the cause of his destruction, as it hath been of several others. For if he had followed my advice, he might have been safe at home with his family at this time, as well as myself. I had several men died in my ship of calentures,’ so that I was forced to get recruits out of Barbadoes, and the Leeward Islands, where I touched by the direction of the merchants who employed me, which I had soon too much cause to repent: for I found afterwards that most of them had been buccaneers. I had fifty hands on board, and my orders were, that I should trade with the Indians in the South-Sea, and make what dis-

coveries I could. These rogues whom I had picked up debauched my other men, and they all formed a conspiracy to seize the ship and secure me; which they did one morning, rushing into my cabin, and binding me hand and foot, threatening to throw me overboard, if I offered to stir. I told them, I was their prisoner, and would submit. This

they made me swear to do, and then they unbound me, only fastening one of my legs with a chain near my bed, and placed a sentry at my door with his piece charged, who

'Houyhnhnms: The name is meant to sound like the neigh of a horse.

* Teneriffe: One of the Canary Islands. *Campechy: In the Gulf of Mexico. “calentures: A tropical fever.

Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, Chapter 1

PlateVIPart II Hagel, Nuyts

| Lewins

Vand

Ta

Land

LS! Pieter

Land of the Houyhnhnms

From the 1726 Motte edition of Gulliver's Travels. (Courtesy of the Trustees ofthe Boston Public Library)

j 2

Hovyunnnms

Difgered

ADun

was commanded to shoot me dead, if I attempted my liberty. They sent me down victuals and drink, and took the government of the ship to themselves. Their design

was to turn pirates, and plunder the Spaniards, which they could not do, till they got more men. But first they resolved to sell the goods in the ship, and then go to Madagascar for recruits, several among them having died since my confinement. They sailed many weeks, and traded with the Indians, but I knew not what course they took,

being kept a close prisoner in my cabin, and expecting nothing less than to be murdered, as they often threatened me.

233

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JONATHAN

SWIFT

Upon the ninth day of May, 1711, one James Welch came down to my cabin; and

said he had orders from the Captain to get me ashore. I expostulated with him, but in vain; neither would he so much as tell me who their new Captain was. They forced

me into the longboat, letting me put on my best suit of clothes, which were as good as new, and a small bundle of linen, but no arms except my hanger; and they were so civil as not to search my pockets, into which I conveyed what money I had, with some other little necessaries. They rowed about a league, and then set me down ona strand. I desired them to tell me what country it was. They all swore, they knew no more than myself, but said, that the Captain (as they called him) was resolved, after they had sold the lading, to get rid of me in the first place where they could discover land. They pushed off immediately, advising me to make haste, for fear of being overtaken by the tide, and so bade me farewell. In this desolate condition I advanced forward, and soon got upon firm ground, where I sat down on a bank to rest myself, and consider what I had best to do. When I was a little refreshed, I went up into the country, resolving to deliver myself to the first savages I should meet, and purchase my life from them by some bracelets, glass rings, and other toys which sailors usually provide themselves with in those voyages, and whereof I had some about me. The land was divided by long rows of trees, not regularly planted, but naturally growing; there was great plenty of grass, and several fields of oats. I walked very circumspectly for fear of being surprised, or suddenly shot with an arrow from behind or on either side. | fell into a beaten road, where I saw many tracks of human feet, and some of cows, but most of horses. At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular, and deformed, which a little discomposed me, so that I lay down behind a thicket to observe them better. Some of them coming forward near the place where I lay, gave me an opportunity of distinctly marking their form. Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled and others lank; they had beards

like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs and the fore parts of their legs and feet, but the rest of their bodies were bare, so that I might see their skins, which

were of a brown buff colour. They had no tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus; which, I presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sat on the ground; for this posture they used, as well as lying down, and often stood on their hind feet. They climbed high trees, as nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, terminating in sharp points, and hooked. They would often spring, and bound, and leap with prodigious agility. The females were not so large as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor any thing more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies, except about the anus, and pudenda. Their dugs hung between their fore-feet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked. The hair of both sexes was of several colours, brown, red, black, and yellow. Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my

travels so disagreeable an animal, nor one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy. So that thinking I had seen enough, full of contempt and aversion, | got up and pursued the beaten road, hoping it might direct me to the cabin of

some Indian. I had not got far when I met one of these creatures full in my way, and coming up directly to me. The ugly monster, when he saw me, distorted several ways

Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, Chapter 1

every feature of his visage, and stared as at an object he had never seen before; then approaching nearer, lifted up his fore-paw, whether out of curiosity or mischief , I could not tell. But I drew my hanger, and gave hima good blow with the flat side of it, for I durst not strike with the edge, fearing the inhabitants might be provoked against me, if they should come to know, that I had killed or maimed any of their cattle. When the beast felt the smart, he drew back, and roared so loud, that a herd of at least forty came flocking about me from the next field, howling and making odious faces; but I ran to the body of a tree, and leaning my back against it, kept them off by waving my hanger. Several of this cursed brood getting hold of the branches behind, leapt up into the tree, from whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head; however, I escaped pretty well, by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with the filth, which fell about me on every side. In the midst of this distress, I observed them all to run away on a sudden as fast as they could, at which I ventured to leave the tree, and pursue the road, wondering what it was that could put them into this fright. But looking on my left hand, I saw a horse walking softly in the field; which my persecutors having sooner discovered, was the cause of their flight. The horse started a little when he came near me, but

soon recovering himself, looked full in my face with manifest tokens of wonder: he viewed my hands and feet, walking round me several times. I would have pursued my journey, but he placed himself directly in the way, yet looking with a very mild aspect, never offering the least violence. We stood gazing at each other for some time; at last I took the boldness to reach my hand towards his neck, with a design to stroke it, using the common style and whistle of jockeys when they are going to handle a strange horse. But this animal seeming to receive my civilities with disdain, shook his head, and bent his brows, softly raising up his right fore-foot to remove my hand. Then he neighed three or four times, but in so different a cadence, that I almost began to think he was speaking to himself in some language of his own. While he and I were thus employed, another horse came up; who applying himself to the first in very formal manner, they gently struck each other’s right hoof before, neighing several times by turns, and varying the sound, which seemed to be almost articulate. They went some paces off, as if it were to confer together, walking side by side, backward and forward, like persons deliberating upon some affair of weight, but often turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that I might not escape. I was amazed to see such actions and behaviour in brute beasts, and concluded with myself,

that if the inhabitants of this country were endued with a proportionable degree of reason, they must needs be the wisest people upon earth. This thought gave me so much comfort, that I resolved to go forward until I could discover some house or village, or meet with any of the natives, leaving the two horses to discourse together as they pleased. But the first, who was a dapple gray, observing me to steal off, neighed after me in so expressive a tone, that I fancied myself to understand what he meant; whereupon I turned back, and came near him, to expect his farther commands: but concealing

my fear as much as I could, for I began to be in some pain, how this adventure might terminate; and the reader will easily believe I did not much like my present situation. The two horses came up close to me, looking with great earnestness upon my face and hands. The gray steed rubbed my hat all round with his right fore-hoof, and

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discomposed it so much that I was forced to adjust it better, by taking it off, and settling it again; whereat both he and his companion (who was a brown bay) appeared to be much surprised: The latter felt the lappet of my coat, and finding it to hang loose about me, they both looked with new signs of wonder. He stroked my right hand, seeming to admire the softness and colour; but he squeezed it so hard between his hoof and his pastern, that I was forced to roar; after which they both touched me with all possible tenderness. They were under great perplexity about my shoes and stockings, which they felt very often, neighing to each other, and using various gestures, not unlike those of a philosopher, when he would attempt to solve some new and difficult phenomenon. Upon the whole, the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and rational, so acute and judicious, that I at last concluded, they must needs be magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some design, and seeing a stranger in the way, were resolved to divert themselves with him; or perhaps were really amazed at the sight of a man so very different in habit, feature, and complexion from those who might probably live in so remote a climate. Upon the strength of this reasoning, I ventured to address them in the following manner: Gentlemen, if you be conjurers, as I have good cause to believe, you can understand any language; therefore I make bold to let your worships know, that I am a poor distressed English man, driven by his misfortunes upon your coast, and I entreat one of you, to let me ride upon his back, as if he were a real horse, to some house or village, where I can be relieved. In

return of which favour, I will make you a present of this knife and bracelet (taking them out of my pocket). The two creatures stood silent while I spoke, seeming to listen with great attention; and when I had ended, they neighed frequently towards each other, as if they were engaged in serious conversation. I plainly observed, that their language expressed the passions very well, and the words might with little pains be resolved into an alphabet more easily than the Chinese. I could frequently distinguish the word Yahoo, which was repeated by each of them several times; and although it was impossible for me to conjecture what it meant, yet while the two horses were busy in conversation, | endeavoured to practise this word upon my tongue; and as soon as they were silent, I boldly pronounced Yahoo in a loud voice, imitating, at the same time, as near as I could, the neighing of a horse; at which they were both visibly surprised, and the gray repeated the same word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right accent, wherein I spoke after him as well as I could, and found myself perceivably to improve every time, though very far from any degree of perfection. Then the bay tried me with a second word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing it to the English orthography, may be spelt thus, Houyhnhnm. I did not succeed in this so well as the former, but after two or three farther trials, I had better

fortune; and they both appeared amazed at my capacity. After some further discourse, which I then conjectured might relate to me, the two friends took their leaves, with the same compliment of striking each other’s hoof; and the gray made me signs that I should walk before him, wherein I thought it prudent to comply, till I could find a better director. When I offered to slacken my pace, he would cry Hhuun, Hhuun; | guessed his meaning, and gave him to understand, as well as I could, that I was weary, and not able to walk faster; upon which, he

would stand a while to let me rest.

Gulliver's Travels, Part TV, Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2. The Author conducted by a Houyhnhnm to his house. The house described . The Author's reception. The food of the Houyhnhnms. The Author in distress for want of meat, is at last relieved. His manner offeeding in this country. Having travelled about three miles, we came to a long kind ofbuilding, made of timber, stuck in the ground, and wattled across; the roof was low, and covered with straw. I now began to be a little comforted, and took out some toys, which travellers usually carry for presents to the savage Indians of America and other parts, in hopes the people of the house would be thereby encouraged to receive me kindly. The horse made me a sign to go in first; it was a large room with a smooth clay floor, and a rack and manger extending the whole length on one side. There were three nags, and two mares, not eating, but some of them sitting down upon their hams, which I very much wondered at; but wondered more to see the rest employed in domestic business. These seemed but ordinary cattle; however, this confirmed my first opinion, that a people who could so far civilise brute animals, must needs excel in wisdom

all the nations of the world. The gray came in just after, and thereby prevented any ill treatment, which the others might have given me. He neighed to them several times in a style of authority, and received answers. Beyond this room there were three others, reaching the length of the house, to which you passed through three doors, opposite to each other, in the manner of a vista; we went through the second room towards the third; here the gray walked in first, beckoning me to attend: I waited in the second room, and got ready my presents for the master and mistress of the house: They were two knives, three bracelets of false pearl, a small looking-glass, and a bead necklace. The horse neighed three or four times, and I waited to hear some answers in a human voice, but I heard no other

returns, than in the same dialect, only one or two a little shriller than his. I began to think that this house must belong to some person of great note among them, because there appeared so much ceremony before I could gain admittance. But, that a man of quality should be served all by horses, was beyond my comprehension. I feared my brain was disturbed by my sufferings and misfortunes: I roused myself, and looked about me in the room where I was left alone; this was furnished like the first, only after a more elegant manner. I rubbed my eyes often, but the same objects still occurred. I pinched my arms and sides, to awake myself, hoping I might be in a dream. I then absolutely concluded, that all these appearances could be nothing else but necromancy and magic. But I had no time to pursue these reflections; for the gray horse came to the door, and made me a sign to follow him into the third room, where I saw a very comely mare, together with a colt and foal, sitting on their haunches,

upon mats of straw, not unartfully made, and perfectly neat and clean. The mare soon after my entrance, rose from her mat, and coming up close, after having nicely observed my hands and face, gave me a most contemptuous look; then

turning to the horse, I heard the word Yahoo often repeated betwixt them; the meaning of which word I could not then comprehend, although it were the first Ihad learned to pronounce; but I was soon better informed, to my everlasting mortification: for the horse beckoning to me with his head, and repeating the word Hhuun,

Hhuun, as he did upon the road, which I understood was to attend him, led me out

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house. into a kind of court, where was another building at some distance from the

Here we entered, and I saw three of those detestable creatures, whom I first met after my landing, feeding upon roots, and the flesh of some animals, which I afterwards or found to be that of asses and dogs, and now and then a cow dead by accident

disease. They were all tied by the neck with strong withes, fastened to a beam; they held their food between the claws of their fore-feet, and tore it with their teeth.

The master horse ordered a sorrel nag, one of his servants, to untie the largest of

these animals, and take him into the yard. The beast and I were brought close together, and our countenances diligently compared, both by master and servant, who thereupon repeated several times the word Yahoo. My horror and astonishment are not to be described, when I observed, in this abominable animal, a perfect human

figure: the face of it indeed was flat and broad, the nose depressed, the lips large, and the mouth wide. But these differences are common to all savage nations, where the lineaments of the countenance are distorted by the natives suffering their infants to lie grovelling on the earth, or by carrying them on their backs, nuzzling with their face against the mother’s shoulders. The fore-feet of the Yahoo differed from my hands in nothing else but the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs. There was the same resemblance between our feet, with the same differences, which I knew very well, though the horses did not,

because of my shoes and stockings; the same in every part of our bodies, except as to hairiness and colour, which I have already described.

The great difficulty that seemed to stick with the two horses, was, to see the rest of my body so very different from that of a Yahoo, for which I was obliged to my clothes, whereof they had no conception. The sorrel nag offered me a root, which he held (after their manner, as we shall describe in its proper place) between his hoof and pastern; I took it in my hand, and having smelt it, returned it to him again as civilly as I could. He brought out of the Yahoo’s kennel a piece of ass’s flesh, but it smelt so offensively that I turned from it with loathing: he then threw it to the Yahoo, by whom it was greedily devoured. He afterwards showed me a wisp of hay, and a fetlock full of oats; but I shook my head, to signify, that neither of these were food for me. And indeed, I now apprehended that I must absolutely starve, if I did not get to some of my own species; for as to those filthy Yahoos, although there were few greater lovers of mankind, at that time, than myself, yet I confess I never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts; and the more I came near them, the more hateful they grew, while I stayed in that country. This the master horse observed by my behaviour, and therefore sent the Yahoo back to his kennel. He then put his fore-hoof to his mouth, at which I was much surprised, although he did it with ease, and with a motion that appeared perfectly natural, and made other signs to know what I would eat; but I could not return him such an answer as he was able to apprehend; and if he had understood me, I did not see how it was possible to contrive any way for finding myself nourishment. While we were thus engaged, I observed a cow passing by, whereupon I pointed to her, and expressed a desire to let me go and milk her. This had its effect; for he led me back into the house, and ordered a mare-servant to open a room, where a good store of milk lay in earthen and wooden vessels, after a very orderly and cleanly manner. She gave me a large bowl full, of which I drank very heartily, and found myself well refreshed.

Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, Chapter 2

About noon I saw coming towards the house a kind of vehicle, drawn like a sledge by four Yahoos. There was in it an old steed, who seemed to be of quality; he alighted with his hind-feet forward, having by accident got a hurt in his left fore-foot . He came to dine with our horse, who received him with great civility. They dined in the best room, and had oats boiled in milk for the second course, which the old horse

eat warm, but the rest cold. Their mangers were placed circular in the middle of the room, and divided into several partitions, round which they sat on their haunches upon bosses of straw. In the middle was a large rack with angles answering to every partition of the manger; so that each horse and mare eat their own hay, and their own mash of oats and milk, with much decency and regularity. The behaviour of the young colt and foal appeared very modest, and that of the master and mistress extremely cheerful and complaisant to their guest. The gray ordered me to stand by him, and much discourse passed between him and his friend concerning me, as I found by the stranger’s often looking on me, and the frequent repetition of the word Yahoo. I happened to wear my gloves, which the master gray observing, seemed perplexed, discovering signs of wonder what I had done to my fore-feet; he put his hoof three or four times to them, as if he would signify, that I should reduce them to their

former shape, which I presently did, pulling off both my gloves, and putting them into my pocket. This occasioned farther talk, and I saw the company was pleased with my behaviour, whereof I soon found the good effects. I was ordered to speak the few words I understood, and while they were at dinner, the master taught me the names for oats, milk, fire, water, and some others; which I could readily pronounce after him, having from my youth a great facility in learning languages. When dinner was done, the master horse took me aside, and by signs and words made me understand the concern that he was in, that I had nothing to eat. Oats in

their tongue are called hlunnh. This word I pronounced two or three times; for although I had refused them at first, yet upon second thoughts, I considered that I could contrive to make of them a kind of bread, which might be sufficient with milk to keep me alive, till Icould make my escape to some other country, and to creatures of my own species. The horse immediately ordered a white mare-servant of his family to bring me a good quantity of oats in a sort of wooden tray. These I heated before the fire as well as I could, and rubbed them till the husks came off, which I made a shift to

winnow from the grain; I ground and beat them between two stones, then took water, and made them into a paste or cake, which I toasted at the fire, and ate warm with milk. It was at first a very insipid diet, though common enough in many parts of Europe, but grew tolerable by time; and having been often reduced to hard fare in my life, this was not the first experiment I had made how easily nature is satisfied. And I cannot but observe, that I never had one hour’s sickness, while I stayed in this island.

Tis true, I sometimes made a shift to catch a rabbit, or bird, by springes’ made of Yahoos’ hairs, and I often gathered wholesome herbs, which I boiled, and eat as salads with my bread, and now and then, for a rarity, I made a little butter, and drank the

° springes: Snares.

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whey. I was at first at a great loss for salt; but custom soon reconciled the want of it; and I am confident that the frequent use of salt among us is an effect of luxury, and was first introduced only as a provocative to drink; except where it is necessary for preserving of flesh in long voyages, or in places remote from great markets. For we observe no animal to be fond of it but man: and as to myself, when I left this country, it was a great while before I could endure the taste of it in anything that I eat. This is enough to say upon the subject of my diet, wherewith other travellers fill their books, as if the readers were personally concerned whether we fared well or ill. However, it was necessary to mention this matter, lest the world should think it impossible that I could find sustenance for three years in such a country, and among such inhabitants. When it grew towards evening, the master horse ordered a place for me to lodge in; it was but six yards from the house, and separated from the stable of the Yahoos. Here I got some straw, and covering myself with my own clothes, slept very sound. But I was in a short time better accommodated, as the reader shall know hereafter, when I come to treat more particularly about my way of living.

CHAPTER 3. The Author studious to learn the language, the Houyhnhnm his master assists in teaching him. The language described. Several Houyhnhnms ofquality come out of curiosity to see the Author. He gives his master a short account ofhis voyage. My principal endeavour was to learn the language, which my master (for so I shall henceforth call him), and his children, and every servant of his house, were desirous

to teach me. For they looked upon it as a prodigy that a brute animal should discover such marks of a rational creature. I pointed to every thing, and enquired the name of it, which I wrote down in my journal-book when I was alone, and corrected my bad accent by desiring those of the family to pronounce it often. In this employment, a sorrel nag, one of the under servants, was very ready to assist me. In speaking, they pronounce through the nose and throat, and their language approaches nearest to the High-Dutch, or German, of any I know in Europe; but is much more graceful and significant. The Emperor Charles V. made almost the same observation, when he said, that if he were to speak to his horse, it should be in High-Dutch. The curiosity and impatience of my master were so great, that he spent many hours of his leisure to instruct me. He was convinced (as he afterwards told me) that

I must be a Yahoo, but my teachableness, civility, and cleanliness, astonished him; which were qualities altogether so opposite to those animals. He was most perplexed about my clothes, reasoning sometimes with himself, whether they were a part of my body: for I never pulled them off till the family were asleep, and got them on before they waked in the morning. My master was eager to learn from whence I came, how I acquired those appearances of reason, which I discovered in all my actions, and to know my story from my own mouth, which he hoped he should soon do by the great proficiency I made in learning and pronouncing their words and sentences. To help my memory, I formed all I learned into the English alphabet, and writ the words down with the translations. This last, after some time, I ventured to do in my mas-

ter’s presence. It cost me much trouble to explain to him what I was doing; for the inhabitants have not the least idea of books or literature.

Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, Chapter 3

In about ten weeks time I was able to understand most of his questions , and in

three months could give him some tolerable answers. He was extremely curious to know from what part of the country I came, and how I was taught to imitate a rational creature, because the Yahoos (whom he saw I exactly resembled in my head, hands, and face, that were only visible), with some appearance of cunning, and the strongest disposition to mischief, were observed to be the most unteachable of all brutes. I answered, that I came over the sea from a far place, with many others of my own kind, in a great hollow vessel made of the bodies of trees. That my companions forced me to land on this coast, and then left me to shift for myself. It was with some difficulty, and by the help of many signs, that I brought him to understand me. He replied, that I must needs be mistaken, or that I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.) He knew it was impossible that there could be a country beyond the sea, or that a parcel of brutes could move a wooden vessel whither they pleased upon water. He was sure no Houyhnhnm alive could make such a vessel, nor would trust Yahoos to manage it. The word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a horse, and in its etymology, the perfection of nature. 1 told my master, that I was at a loss for expression, but would improve as fast as | could; and hoped in a short time I should be able to tell him wonders: he was pleased to direct his own mare, his colt and foal, and the servants of the family, to take all opportunities of instructing me, and every day for two or three hours, he was at the same pains himself. Several horses and mares of quality in the neighbourhood came often to our house upon the report spread of a wonderful Yahoo, that could speak like a Houyhnhnm, and seemed in his words and actions to discover some glimmerings of reason. These delighted to converse with me: they put many questions, and received such answers as I was able to return. By all these advantages, I made so great a progress, that in five months from my arrival I understood whatever was spoke, and could express myself tolerably well. The Houyhnhnms who came to visit my master, out of a design of seeing and talking with me, could hardly believe me to be a right Yahoo, because my body had a different covering from others of my kind. They were astonished to observe me without the usual hair or skin, except on my head, face, and hands; but I discovered that secret to my master, upon an accident, which happened about a fortnight before. I have already told the reader, that every night when the family were gone to bed, it was my custom to strip and cover myself with my clothes: it happened one morning early, that my master sent for me, by the sorrel nag, who was his valet; when he came, I was fast asleep, my clothes fallen off on one side, and my shirt above my

waist. I awaked at the noise he made, and observed him to deliver his message in some disorder; after which he went to my master, and in a great fright gave him a very confused account of what he had seen. This I presently discovered; for going as soon as I was dressed, to pay my attendance upon his Honour, he asked me the meaning of what his servant had reported, that I was not the same thing when I slept as I appeared to be at other times; that his valet assured him, some part of me was white, some yellow, at least not so white, and some brown.

I had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to distinguish myself,

as much as possible, from that cursed race of Yahoos; but now I found it in vain to

do so any longer. Besides, I considered that my clothes and shoes would soon wear

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out, which already were in a declining condition, and must be supplied by some contrivance from the hides of Yahoos or other brutes; whereby the whole secret would be known. I therefore told my master, that in the country from whence | came,

those of my kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of certain animals prepared by art, as well for decency as to avoid the inclemencies of air, both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person, I would give him immediate conviction, if he

pleased to command me: only desiring his excuse, if Idid not expose those parts that nature taught us to conceal. He said my discourse was all very strange, but especially the last part; for he could not understand why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given. That neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but however I might do as I pleased. Whereupon, | first unbuttoned my coat, and pulled it off. I did the same with my waistcoat; I drew off my shoes, stockings, and breeches. I let my shirt down to my waist, and drew up the bottom, fastening it like a girdle about my middle to hide my nakedness. My master observed the whole performance with great signs of curiosity and admiration. He took up all my clothes in his pastern, one piece after another, and examined them diligently; he then stroked my body very gently, and looked round me several times, after which he said, it was plain that I must be a perfect Yahoo; but that I differed very much from the rest of my species, in the softness, and whiteness,

and smoothness of my skin, my want of hair in several parts of my body, the shape and shortness of my claws behind and before, and my affectation of walking continually on my two hinder feet. He desired to see no more, and gave me leave to put on my clothes again, for I was shuddering with cold. I expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the appellation of Yahoo, an odious animal, for which | had so utter a hatred and contempt. I begged he would forbear applying that word to me, and take the same order in his family, and among his friends whom he suffered to see me. I requested likewise, that the secret of my having a false covering to my body might be known to none but himself, at least as long as my present clothing should last; for as to what the sorrel nag his valet had observed, his Honour might command him to conceal it. All this my master very graciously consented to, and thus the secret was kept till my clothes began to wear out, which I was forced to supply by several contrivances, that shall hereafter be mentioned. In the meantime, he desired I would go on with my utmost diligence to learn their language, because he was more astonished at my capacity for speech and reason, than at the figure of my body, whether it were covered or no; adding, that he waited with some impatience to hear the wonders which I promised to tell him. From thenceforward he doubled the pains ie had been at to instruct me; he brought me into all company, and made them treat me with civility, because, as he

told them, diverting. Every would ask could; and imperfect.

privately, this would put me into good humour, and make me more

day when I waited on him, beside the trouble he was at in teaching, he me several questions concerning myself, which I answered as well as I by these means he had already received some general ideas, though very It would be tedious to relate the several steps by which I advanced to a

Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, Chapter 4

more regular conversation: But the first account I gave of myself in any order and length, was to this purpose: That I came from a very far country, as I already had attempted to tell him, with about fifty more of my own species; that we travelled upon the seas, in a great hollow

vessel made of wood, and larger than his Honour’s house. I described the ship to

him in the best terms I could, and explained by the help of my handkerchief displayed, how it was driven forward by the wind. That upon a quarrel among us, I was

set on shore on this coast, where I walked forward without knowing whither, till he

delivered me from the persecution of those execrable Yahoos. He asked me, who made the ship, and how it was possible that the Houyhnhnms of my country would leave it to the management of brutes? My answer was, that I durst proceed no further

in my relation, unless he would give me his word and honour that he would not be

offended, and then I would tell him the wonders I had so often promised. He agreed; and I went on by assuring him, that the ship was made by creatures like myself, who in all the countries I had travelled, as well as in my own, were the only governing, rational animals; and that upon my arrival hither, I was as much astonished to see the Houyhnhnms act like rational beings, as he or his friends could be in finding some marks of reason in a creature he was pleased to call a Yahoo, to which I owned my resemblance in every part, but could not account for their degenerate and brutal nature. | said farther, that if good fortune ever restored me to my native country, to relate my travels hither, as I resolved to do, every body would believe that I said the thing which was not; that I invented the story out of my own head; and with all possible respect to himself, his family and friends, and under his promise of not being offended, our countrymen would hardly think it probable, that a Houyhnhnm should be the presiding creature of a nation, and a Yahoo the brute. CHAPTER 4. The Houyhnhnms’ notion of truth and falsehood. The Author’s discourse disapproved by his master. The Author gives a more particular account of himself, and the accidents of his voyage.

My master heard me with great appearances of uneasiness in his countenance, because doubting, or not believing, are so little known in this country, that the inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves under such circumstances. And I remember in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood, in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgment. For he argued thus: that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now if any one

said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated; because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information, that he leaves me worse than in ignorance, for I am led to believe a thing black when it is white,

and short when it is long. And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood, and so universally practised, among human creatures. To return from this digression; when I asserted that the Yahoos were the only governing animals in my country, which my master said was altogether past his

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conception, he desired to know, whether we had Houyhnhnms among us, and what was their employment: I told him, we had great numbers, that in summer they grazed in the fields, and in winter were kept in houses, with hay and oats, where Yahoo servants were employed to rub their skins smooth, comb their manes, pick their feet, serve them with food, and make their beds. I understand you well, said my master, it is now very plain, from all you have spoken, that whatever share of reason the Yahoos pretend to, the Houyhnhnms are your masters; I heartily wish our Yahoos would be so tractable. I begged his Honour would please to excuse me from proceeding any farther, because I was very certain that the account he expected from me would be highly displeasing. But he insisted in commanding me to let him know the best and the worst: I told him, he should be obeyed. I owned, that the Houyhnhnms among us, whom we called horses, were the most generous and comely animals we had, that they excelled in strength and swiftness; and when they belonged to persons of quality, employed in travelling, racing, or drawing chariots, they were treated with much kindness and care, till they fell into diseases, or became foundered in the feet; and then they were sold, and used to all kind of drudgery till they died; after which their skins were stripped and sold for what they were worth, and their bodies left to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey. But the common race of horses had not so good fortune, being kept by farmers and carriers, and other mean people, who put them to greater labour, and fed them worse. I described, as well as I could, our way of riding, the shape and use of a bridle, a saddle, a spur, and a whip, of harness and wheels. I added, that we fastened plates of a certain hard substance called iron at the bottom of their feet, to preserve their hoofs from being broken by the stony ways on which we often travelled. My master, after some expressions of great indignation, wondered how we dared to venture upon a Houyhnhnmr’s back, for he was sure, that the weakest servant in his house would be able to shake off the strongest Yahoo, or by lying down, and rolling on his back, squeeze the brute to death. I answered, that our horses were trained up from three or four years old to the several uses we intended them for; that if any of them proved intolerably vicious, they were employed for carriages; that they were severely beaten while they were young for any mischievous tricks; that the males, designed for common use of riding or draught, were generally castrated about two years after their birth, to take down their spirits, and make them more tame and gentle; that they were indeed sensible of rewards and punishments; but his Honour would please to consider, that they had not the least tincture of reason any more than the Yahoos in this country. It put me to the pains of many circumlocutions to give my master a right idea of what I spoke; for their language doth not abound in variety of words, because their wants and passions are fewer than among us. But it is impossible to express his noble resentment at our savage treatment of the Houyhnhnm race, particularly after I had explained the manner and use of castrating horses among us, to hinder them from propagating their kind, and to render them more servile. He said, if it were possible there could be any country where Yahoos alone were endued with reason, they cer-

tainly must be the governing animal, because reason will in time always prevail against brutal strength. But, considering the frame of our bodies, and especially of

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mine, he thought no creature of equal bulk was so ill contrived, for employing that reason in the common offices of life; whereupon he desired to know whether those among whom | lived resembled me or the Yahoos of his country. I assured him, that I was as well shaped as most of my age; but the younger and the females were much more soft and tender, and the skins of the latter generally as white as milk. He said, I differed indeed from other Yahoos, being much more cleanly, and not altogether so deformed, but, in point of real advantage, he thought I differed for the worse. That my nails were of no use either to my fore or hinder-feet; as to my fore-feet, he could not properly call them by that name, for he never observed me to walk upon them; that they were too soft to bear the ground; that I generally went with them uncovered, neither was the covering I sometimes wore on them, of the same shape, or so strong as that on my feet behind. That I could not walk with any security, for if either of my hinder-feet slipped, I must inevitably fall. He then began to find fault with other parts of my body, the flatness of my face, the prominence of my nose, my eyes placed directly in front, so that I could not look on either side without turning my head: that I was not able to feed myself, without lifting one of my fore-feet to my mouth: and therefore nature had placed those joints to answer that necessity. He knew not what could be the use of those several clefts and divisions in my feet behind; these were too soft to bear the hardness and sharpness of stones without a covering made from the skin of some other brute; that my whole body wanted a fence against heat and cold, which I was forced to put on and off every day with tediousness and trouble. And lastly, that he observed every animal in this country naturally to abhor the Yahoos, whom the weaker avoided, and the stronger drove from them. So that supposing us to have the gift of reason, he could not see how it were possible to cure that natural antipathy which every creature discovered against us; nor consequently, how we could tame and render them serviceable. However, he would (as he said) debate the matter no farther, because he was more desirous to

know my own story, the country where I was born, and the several actions and events of my life before I came hither. I assured him, how extremely desirous I was that he should be satisfied on every

point; but I doubted much, whether it would be possible for me to explain myself on several subjects whereof his Honour could have no conception, because I saw nothing in his country to which I could resemble them. That, however, I would do my best, and strive to express myself by similitudes, humbly desiring his assistance when I wanted proper words; which he was pleased to promise me. I said, my birth was of honest parents in an island called England, which was remote from this country, as many days’ journey as the strongest of his Honour’s servants could travel in the annual course of the sun. That I was bred a surgeon,

whose trade it is to cure wounds and hurts in the body, got by accident or violence; that my country was governed by a female man, whom we called a Queen. That I left it to get riches, whereby I might maintain myself and family when I should return. That, in my last voyage, I was commander of the ship, and had about fifty Yahoos under me, many of which died at sea, and I was forced to supply them by others picked out from several nations. That our ship was twice in danger of being sunk; the first time by a great.storm, and the second, by striking against a rock. Here my

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master interposed, by asking me, how I could persuade strangers out of different countries to venture with me, after the losses I had sustained, and the hazards I had run. I said, they were fellows of desperate fortunes, forced to fly from the places of their birth, on account of their poverty or their crimes. Some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, robbery, perjury, forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes or sodomy, for flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy, and most of them had broken prison; none of these durst return to their native countries for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and therefore were under the necessity of seeking a livelihood in other places. During this discourse, my master was pleased to interrupt me several times; I had made use of many circumlocutions in describing to him the nature of the several crimes for which most of our crew had been forced to fly their country. This labour took up several days’ conversation, before he was able to comprehend me. He was wholly at a loss to know what could be the use or necessity of practising those vices. To clear up which I endeavoured to give some ideas of the desire of power and riches, of the terrible effects of lust, intemperance, malice, and envy. All this I was forced to define and describe by putting of cases, and making of suppositions. After which, like one whose imagination was struck with something never seen or heard

of before, he would lift up his eyes with amazement and indignation. Power, government, war, law, punishment, and a thousand other things had no terms, wherein that

language could express them, which made the difficulty almost insuperable to give my master any conception of what I meant. But being of an excellent understanding, much improved by contemplation and converse, he at last arrived at a competent knowledge of what human nature in our parts of the world is capable to perform, and desired I would give him some particular account of that land which we call Europe, but especially of my own country.

CHAPTER 5. The Author, at his master’s commands, informs him ofthe state of England. The causes of war among the princes of Europe. The Author begins to explain the English constitution. The reader may please to observe, that the following extract of many conversations I had with my master, contains a summary of the most material points, which were discoursed at several times for above two years; his Honour often desiring fuller satisfaction as I farther improved in the Houyhnhnm tongue. I laid before him, as well as I could, the whole state of Europe; I discoursed of trade and manufactures, of arts and sciences; and the answers I gave to all the questions he made, as they arose upon several subjects, were a fund of conversation not to be exhausted. But I shall here

only set down the substance of what passed between us concerning my own country, reducing it into order as well as I can, without any regard to time or other circumstances, while I strictly adhere to truth. My only concern is, that I shall hardly be able to do justice to my master’s arguments and expressions, which must needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into our barbarous English. In obedience, therefore, to his Honour’s commands, Irelated to him the Revolution under the Prince of Orange; the long war with France entered into by the said

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prince, and renewed by his successor, the present Queen, wherein the greatest powers of Christendom were engaged, and which still continued: | computed at his request, that about a million of Yahoos might have been killed in the whole progress of it; and perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and thrice as many ships burnt

or sunk.°

He asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another. I answered they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or gray; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more.’ Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent. Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrelleth with another, for fear the other should quarrel with

him. Sometimes a war is entered upon, because the enemy is too strong, and sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have the things which we want; and we both fight, till they take ours or give

us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of a war to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. It is justifiable to enter into war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for us, or a territory of land, that would render our dominions round and complete. If a prince sends forces into a nation, where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living. It is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he hath driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill,

imprison, or banish the prince he came to relieve. Alliance by blood or marriage is a frequent cause of war between princes; and the nearer the kindred is, the greater is their disposition to quarrel: Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. For these reasons, the trade of a 6 Gulliver disingenuously describes to his master the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 that ousted the English James II, and the War of the Spanish Succession, which occupied the decade between 1703 and 1713.

7 Gulliver alludes to a number of religious doctrines and practices disputed hotly by Christians since the Reformation. He refers specifically here to transubstantiation (the Catholic belief that the bread and wine in Communion become the body and blood of Jesus Christ), to the use of crucifixes and music in worship, and to the

wearing of ecclesiastical robes.

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soldier is held the most honourable of all others; because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. There is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in Europe, not able to make war by themselves, who hire out their troops to richer nations, for so much a day to each man; of which they keep three fourths to themselves, and it is the best part of their maintenance; such are those in Germany and other northern parts of Europe. What you have told me (said my master), upon the subject of war, does indeed discover most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend to: however, it is happy that the shame is greater than the danger; and that nature hath left you utterly uncapable of doing much mischief. For your mouths lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each other to any purpose, unless by consent. Then as to the claws upon your feet before and behind, they are so short and tender, that one of our Yahoos would drive a dozen of yours before him. And therefore in recounting the numbers of those who have been killed in battle, I cannot but think that you have said the thing which is not. I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his ignorance. And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights; ships sunk with a

thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side; dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses’ feet; flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases left for food to dogs, and wolves, and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, | assured him, that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies come down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators. I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. He said, whoever understood the nature of Yahoos might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind, to which he was wholly a stranger before. He thought his ears being used to such abominable words, might by degrees admit them with less detestation. That although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that instead of reason, we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill-shapen body, not only larger, but more distorted. He added, that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, both in this, and some former discourses. There was another point which a little perplexed him at

present. I had informed him, that some of our crew left their country on account of being ruined by Law; that I had already explained the meaning of the word; but he

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was at a loss how it should come to pass, that the law which was intended for every man’s preservation, should be any man’s ruin. Therefore he desired to be farther satisfied what I meant by law, and the dispensers thereof, according to the present practice in my own country; because he thought nature and reason were sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we pretended to be, in showing us what we ought to do, and what to avoid. I assured his Honour, that law was a science wherein I had not much conversed,

further than by employing advocates, in vain, upon some injustices that had been done me; however, I would give him all the satisfaction I was able. I said, there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbour hath a mind to my cow, he hires a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages. First, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which as an office

unnatural, he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to gain over my adversary’s lawyer with a double fee; who will then betray his client, by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary; and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of the bench. Now, your Honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known several of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty,” by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office. It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly. In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned: they never desire to know

Sfaculty: Profession.

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what claim or title my adversary hath to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black; her horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue. It is likewise to be observed, that this society hath a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off. In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save the criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law. Here my master interposing, said it was a pity, that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind as these lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge. In answer to which, I assured his Honour, that in all points out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse, as in that of their own profession. CHAPTER 6. A continuation of the state ofEngland. The character of a first or chief minister of state in European courts. My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what I meant in saying they did it for hire. Whereupon I was at much pains to describe to him the use of money, the materials it was made of, and the value of the metals; that when a Yahoo had got a great store of this precious substance, he was able to purchase whatever he had a mind to; the finest clothing, the noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most costly meats and drinks, and have his choice of the

most beautiful females. Therefore since money alone was able to perform all these feats, our Yahoos thought they could never have enough of it to spend or to save, as they found themselves inclined from their natural bent either to profusion or avarice. That the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man’s labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former. That the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small wages to make a few live plentifully. I enlarged myself much on these and many other particulars to the same purpose; but his Honour was still to seek,’ for he went upon a supposition that

* still to seek: Still did not understand.

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all animals had a title to their share in the productions of the earth, and especially those who presided over the rest. Therefore he desired I would let him know, what these costly meats were, and how any of us happened to want them. Whereupon I enumerated as many sorts.as came into my head, with the various methods of dressing them, which could not be done without sending vessels by sea to every part of the world, as well for liquors to drink, as for sauces, and innumerable other conveniences. I assured him, that this whole globe of earth must be at least three times gone round, before one of our better female Yahoos could get her breakfast, or a cup to put it in. He said, that must needs be a miserable country which cannot furnish food for its own inhabitants. But what he chiefly wondered at, was how such vast tracts of ground as I described should be wholly without fresh water, and the people put to the necessity of sending over the sea for drink. I replied, that England (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food, more than its inhabitants are able to consume, as well as liquors extracted from

grain, or pressed out of the fruit of certain trees, which made excellent drink, and the same proportion in every other convenience of life. But, in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, from whence in return we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, free-thinking, and the like occupations: every one of which terms, I was at much pains to make him understand. That wine was not imported among us from foreign countries, to supply the want of water or other drinks, but because it was a sort of liquid which made us merry, by putting us out of our senses; diverted all melancholy thoughts, begat wild extravagant imaginations in the brain, raised our hopes, and banished our fears, suspended every office of reason for a time, and deprived us of the use of our limbs, till we fell into a profound sleep; although it must be confessed, that we always awaked sick and dispirited, and that the use of this liquor filled us with diseases, which made our lives uncomfortable and short. But beside all this, the bulk of our people supported themselves by furnishing the necessities or conveniences of life to the rich, and to each other. For instance,

when I am at home and dressed as I ought to be, I carry on my body the workmanship of an hundred tradesmen; the building and furniture of my house employ as many more, and five times the number to adorn my wife. I was going on to tell him of another sort of people, who get their livelihood by attending the sick, having upon some occasions informed his Honour that many of my crew had died of diseases. But here it was with the utmost difficulty, that I brought him to apprehend what I meant. He could easily conceive, that a Houyhnhnm grew weak and heavy a few days before his death, or by some accident might hurt a limb. But that nature, who works all things to perfection, should suffer any pains to breed in our bodies, he thought impossible, and desired to know the reason of so unaccountable an evil. I told him, we fed on a thousand things which operated

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contrary to each other; that we eat when we were not hungry, and drank without the provocation of thirst; that we sat whole nights drinking strong liquors without eating a bit, which disposed us to sloth, inflamed our bodies, and precipitated or prevented digestion. That prostitute female Yahoos acquired a certain malady, which bred rottenness in the bones of those who fell into their embraces; that this and many other diseases were propagated from father to son, so that great numbers came into the world with complicated maladies upon them; that it would be endless to give him a catalogue of all diseases incident to human bodies; for they would not be fewer than five or six hundred, spread over every limb and joint; in short, every part, external and intestine, having diseases appropriated to each. To remedy which, there was a sort of people bred up among us, in the profession or pretence of curing the sick. And because I had some skill in the faculty, I would in gratitude to his Honour, let him know the whole mystery and method by which they proceed. Their fundamental is, that all diseases arise from repletion, from whence they conclude, that a great evacuation of the body is necessary, either through the natural passage, or upwards at the mouth. Their next business is, from herbs, minerals, gums, oils, shells, salts, juices, seaweed, excrements, barks of trees, serpents, toads, frogs, spiders, dead men’s flesh and bones, birds, beasts, and fishes, to form a compo-

sition for smell and taste the most abominable, nauseous, and detestable, they can possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately rejects with loathing; and this they call a vomit; or else from the same store-house, with some other poisonous additions, they command us to take in at the orifice above or below (just as the

physician then happens to be disposed) a medicine equally annoying and disgustful to the bowels; which relaxing the belly, drives down all before it, and this they call a

purge, or a clyster. For nature (as the physicians allege) having intended the superior anterior orifice only for the intromission of solids and liquids, and the inferior posterior for ejection, these artists ingeniously considering that in all diseases nature is forced out of her seat, therefore to replace her in it, the body must be treated in a manner directly contrary, by interchanging the use of each orifice; forcing solids and liquids in at the anus, and making evacuations at the mouth. But, besides real diseases, we are subject to many that are only imaginary, for which the physicians have invented imaginary cures; these have their several names, and so have the drugs that are proper for them, and with these our female Yahoos are always infested. One great excellency in this tribe is their skill at prognostics, wherein they seldom fail; their predictions in real diseases, when they rise to any degree of malignity, generally portending death, which is always in their power, when recovery is not: and therefore, upon any unexpected signs of amendment, after they have pronounced their sentence, rather than be accused as false prophets, they know how to approve’ their sagacity to the world by a seasonable dose. They are likewise of special use to husbands and wives, who are grown weary of their mates; to eldest sons, to great ministers of state, and often to princes.

'° approve: Prove.

Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, Chapter 6

I had formerly upon occasion discoursed with my master upon the nature of government in general, and particularly of our own excellent constitution, deserved ly the wonder and envy of the whole world. But having here accidentally mention ed a minister of state, he commanded me some time after to inform him, what species of Yahoo I particularly meant by that appellation. I told him, that a First or Chief Minister of State, who was the person I intended to describe, was a creature wholly exempt from joy and grief, love and hatred, pity and anger; at least made use of no other passions but a violent desire of wealth,

power, and titles; that he applies his words to all uses, except to the indication of his mind; that he never tells a truth, but with an intent that you should take it for a lie; nor a lie, but with a design that you should take it for a truth; that those he speaks worst of behind their backs, are in the surest way of preferment; and whenever he begins to praise you to others or to yourself, you are from that day forlorn. The worst mark you can receive is a promise, especially when it is confirmed with an oath; after which every wise man retires, and gives over all hopes. There are three methods by which a man may rise to be chief minister: the first is, by knowing how with prudence to dispose of a wife, a daughter, or a sister: the second, by betraying or undermining his predecessor: and the third is, by a furious zeal in public assemblies against the corruptions of the court. But a wise prince would rather choose to employ those who practise the last of these methods; because such zealots prove always the most obsequious and subservient to the will and passions of their master. That these ministers having all employments at their disposal, preserve themselves in power, by bribing the majority of a senate or great council; and at last, by an expedient called an Act of Indemnity’ (whereof I described the nature to him) they secure themselves from after-reckonings, and retire from the public, laden with the spoils of the nation. The palace of a chief minister is a seminary to breed up others in his own trade: the pages, lackeys, and porters, by imitating their master, become ministers of state in their several districts, and learn to excel in the three principal ingredients, of insolence, lying, and bribery. Accordingly, they have a subaltern court paid to them by persons of the best rank, and sometimes by the force of dexterity and impudence, arrive through several gradations to be successors to their lord. He is usually governed by a decayed wench, or favourite footman, who are the tunnels through which all graces are conveyed, and may properly be called, in the last resort, the governors of the kingdom. One day in discourse my master, having heard me mention the nobility of my country, was pleased to make me a compliment which I could not pretend to deserve: that he was sure I must have been born of some noble family, because I far exceeded in shape, colour, and cleanliness, all the Yahoos of his nation, although I

seemed to fail in strength and agility, which must be imputed to my different way of living from those other brutes; and besides, I was not only endowed with the faculty of speech, but likewise with some rudiments of reason, to a degree, that with all his acquaintance I passed for a prodigy.

"1 Act of Indemnity: Legislation providing immunity to statesmen who have unknowingly violated a law.

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He made me observe, that among the Houyhnhnms, the white, the sorrel, and the iron-gray, were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the dapple-gray, and the black; nor born with equal talents of the mind, or a capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition of servants, without ever aspiring to match

out of their own race, which in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural. I made his Honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me; but assured him at the same time, that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility among us was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution, merely for the sake of money, whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, ricketty, or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride. Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted, repealed, or altered; and these have the decision of all our possessions without appeal. CHAPTER 7. The Author's great love of his native country. His master’s observations upon the constitution and administration of England, as described by the Author, with parallel cases and comparisons. His master’s observations upon human nature. The reader may be disposed to wonder how I could prevail on myself to give so free a representation of my own species, among a race of mortals who are already too apt to conceive the vilest opinion of human kind, from that entire congruity betwixt me and their Yahoos. But I must freely confess, that the many virtues of those excellent quadrupeds placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light, and to think the honour of my own kind not worth managing; which, besides, it was impossible for me to do before a person of so acute a judgment as my master, who daily convinced me of a thousand faults in myself, whereof I had not the least perception before, and which with us would never be numbered even among human infirmities. I had likewise learned from his example an utter detestation of all falsehood or disguise; and truth appeared so amiable to me, that I determined upon sacrificing every thing to it. Let me deal so candidly with the reader, as to confess, that there was yet a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my representation of things. I had not

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been a year in this country, before I contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that I entered on a firm resolution never to return to human kind, but to pass the rest of my life among these admirable Houyhnhnms in the contemplation and practice of every virtue; where I could have no example or incitement to vice. But it was decreed by fortune, my perpetual enemy, that so great a felicity should not fall to my share. However, it is now some comfort to reflect, that in what I said of my countrymen, I extenuated their faults as much as I durst before so strict an examiner, and upon every article gave as favourable a turn as the matter would bear. For, indeed, who is there alive that will not be swayed by his bias and partiality to the place of his birth? I have related the substance of several conversations I had with my master, during the greatest part of the time I had the honour to be in his service, but have indeed for brevity sake omitted much more than is here set down. When I had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed to be fully satisfied; he sent for me one morning early, and commanding me to sit down at some distance (an honour which he had never before conferred upon me), he said, he had

been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked upon us as a sort of animals to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use than by its assistance to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us. That we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed, had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions. That as to myself, was manifest I had neither the strength or agility of acommon Yahoo; that I walked infirmly on my hinder feet; had found out a contrivance to make my claws of no use or defence, and to remove the

hair from my chin, which was intended as a shelter from the sun and the weather. Lastly, that I could neither run with speed, nor climb trees like my brethren (as he called them) the Yahoos in this country. That our institutions of government and law were plainly owing to our gross defects in reason, and by consequence, in virtue; because reason alone is sufficient to

govern a rational creature; which was therefore a character we had no pretence to challenge, even from the account I had given of my own people; although he manifestly perceived, that in order to favour them, I had concealed many particulars, and often said the thing which was not. He was the more confirmed in this opinion, because he observed, that as I agreed in every feature of my body with other Yahoos, except where it was to my real disadvantage in point of strength, speed and activity, the shortness of my claws, and some other particulars where nature had no part; so from the representation [had given him of our lives, our manners, and our actions, he found as near a resem-

blance in the disposition of our minds. He said the Yahoos were known to hate one another more than they did any different species of animals; and the reason usually assigned was the odiousness of their own shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves. He had therefore begun to think it not unwise in us to cover our

bodies, and by that invention conceal many of our own deformities from each other,

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which would else be hardly supportable. But he now found he had been mistaken, and that the dissensions of those brutes in his country were owing to the same cause with ours, as I had described them. For if (said he), you throw among five Yahoos as

much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself; and therefore a servant was usually employed to stand by while they were feeding abroad, and those kept at home were tied at a distance from each other: that if acow died of age or accident, before a Houyhnhnm could secure it for his own Yahoos, those in the neighbourhood would come in herds to seize it, and then would ensue such a battle as I

had described, with terrible wounds made by their claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one another, for want of such convenient instruments

of death as we had invented. At other times the like battles have been fought between the Yahoos of several neighbourhoods without any visible cause; those of one district watching all opportunities to surprise the next before they are prepared. But if they find their project hath miscarried, they return home, and, for want of enemies, engage in what I call a civil war among themselves. That in some fields of his country, there are certain shining stones of several colours, whereof the Yahoos are violently fond, and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happeneth, they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out, then carry them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their treasure. My master said, he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a Yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice which I had ascribed to mankind: that he had once, by way of experiment, privately removed a heap of these stones from the place where one of his Yahoos had buried it: whereupon, the sordid animal missing his treasure, by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to the place, there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the rest, began to pine away, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor work, till he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole, and hide them as before; which when his Yahoo had found, he

presently recovered his spirits and good humour, but took good care to remove them to a better hiding place, and hath ever since been a very serviceable brute. My master farther assured me, which I also observed myself, that in the fields

where the shining stones abound, the fiercest and most frequent battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the neighbouring Yahoos. He said, it was common when two Yahoos discovered such a stone in a field, and

were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a third would take the advantage, and carry it away from them both; which my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance with our suits at law; wherein I thought it for our credit not to undeceive him; since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable than many decrees among us; because the plaintiff and defendant there lost nothing beside the stone they contended for, whereas our courts of equity would never have dismissed the cause while either of them had any thing left. My master continuing his discourse, said, there was nothing that rendered the Yahoos more odious than their undistinguishing appetite to devour every thing that

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came in their way, whether herbs, roots, berries, the corrupted flesh of animals, or all mingled together: and it was peculiar in their temper, that they were fonder of what they could get by rapine or stealth at a greater distance, than much better food provided for them at home. If their prey held out, they would eat till they were ready to burst, after which nature had pointed out to them a certain root that gave them a general evacuation. There was also another kind of root very juicy, but somewhat rare and difficult to be found, which the Yahoos sought for with much eagerness, and would suck it with great delight; and it produced in them the same effects that wine hath upon us. It would make them sometimes hug, and sometimes tear one another; they would howl and grin, and chatter, and reel, and tumble, and then fall asleep in the mud. I did indeed observe, that the Yahoos were the only animals in this country subject to any diseases; which, however, were much fewer than horses have among us, and contracted not by any ill treatment they meet with, but by the nastiness and greediness of that sordid brute. Neither has their language any more than a general appellation for those maladies, which is borrowed from the name of the beast, and called Hnea-Yahoo, or Yahoo’s evil, and the cure prescribed is a mixture of their own

dung and urine forcibly put down the Yahoo’s throat. This I have since often known to have been taken with success, and do freely recommend it to my countrymen, for the public good, as an admirable specific against all diseases produced by repletion. As to learning, government, arts, manufactures, and the like, my master confessed he could find little or no resemblance between the Yahoos of that country and those in ours. For he only meant to observe what parity there was in our natures. He had heard indeed some curious Houyhnhnms observe, that in most herds there was a sort of ruling Yahoo (as among us there is generally some leading or principal stag in a pack), who was always more deformed in body, and mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest. That this leader had usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick his master’s feet and posteriors, and drive the female Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a

piece of ass’s flesh. This favourite is hated by the whole herd, and therefore to protect himself, keeps always near the person of his leader. He usually continues in office till a worse can be found; but the very moment he is discarded, his successor, at the head of all the Yahoos in that district, young and old, male and female, come in a body, and discharge their excrements upon him from head to foot. But how far this might be applicable to our courts and favourites, and ministers of state, my master said I could best determine. I durst make no return to this malicious insinuation, which debased human

understanding below the sagacity of a common hound, who has judgment enough to distinguish and follow the cry of the ablest dog in the pack, without being ever . mistaken. My master told me, there were some qualities remarkable in the Yahoos, which

he had not observed me to mention, or at least very slightly, in the accounts I had given him of human kind. He said, those animals, like other brutes, had their females

in common; but in this they differed, that the she- Yahoo would admit the male while she was pregnant; and.that the hes would quarrel and fight with the females as

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fiercely as with each other. Both which practices were such degrees of infamous brutality, that no other sensitive creature ever arrived at. Another thing he wondered at in the Yahoos, was their strange disposition to nastiness and dirt, whereas there appears to be a natural love of cleanliness in all

other animals. As to the two former accusations, I was glad to let them pass without any reply, because I had not a word to offer upon them in defence of my species, which otherwise I certainly had done from my own inclinations. But I could have easily vindicated human kind from the imputation of singularity upon the last article, if there had been any swine in that country (as unluckily for me there were not), which although it may be a sweeter quadruped than a Yahoo, cannot I humbly conceive in justice pretend to more cleanliness; and so his Honour himself must have owned, if he had seen their filthy way of feeding, and their custom of wallowing and sleeping in the mud. My master likewise mentioned another quality which his servants had discovered in several Yahoos, and to him was wholly unaccountable. He said, a fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo to retire into a corner, to lie down and howl, and groan, and

spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water; nor did the servants imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only remedy they found was to set him to hard work, after which he would infallibly come to himself. To this I was silent out of partiality to my own kind; yet here I could plainly discover the true seeds of spleen, which only seizeth on the lazy, the luxurious, and the rich; who, if they were forced to undergo the same regimen, I would

undertake for the cure. His Honour had further observed, that a female Yahoo would often stand behind a bank or bush, to gaze on the young males passing by, and then appear, and hide, using many antic gestures and grimaces, at which time it was observed, that she had a most offensive smell; and when any of the males advanced, would slowly retire, looking often back, and with a counterfeit show of fear, run off into some con-

venient place where she knew the male would follow her. At other times if a female stranger came among them, three or four of her own sex would get about her, and stare and chatter, and grin, and smell her all over; and

then turn off with gestures that seemed to express contempt and disdain. Perhaps my master might refine a little in these speculations, which he had drawn from what he observed himself, or had been told him by others; however, I could not reflect without some amazement, and much sorrow, that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal, should have place by instinct in womankind.

I expected every moment, that my master would accuse the Yahoos of those unnatural appetites in both sexes, so common among us. But nature, it seems, hath not been so expert a school-mistress; and these politer pleasures are entirely the productions of art and reason, on our side of the globe.

CuHaPTEr 8. The Author relates several particulars of the Yahoos. The great virtues of the Houyhnhnms. The education and exercise of their youth. Their general assembly.

As I ought to have understood human nature much better than I supposed it possible for my master to do, so it was easy to apply the character he gave of the Yahoos

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to myself and my countrymen; and I believed I could yet make farther discoveries from my own observation. I therefore often begged his favour to let me go among the herds of Yahoos in the neighbourhood, to which he always very gracious ly consented, being perfectly convinced that the hatred I bore those brutes would never suffer me to be corrupted by them; and his Honour ordered one of his servants, a strong sorrel nag, very honest and good-natured, to be my guard, without whose protection I durst not undertake such adventures. For I have already told the reader how much I was pestered by those odious animals upon my first arrival. And I afterwards failed very narrowly three or four times of falling into their clutches, when I happened to stray at any distance without my hanger. And I have reason to believe they had some imagination that I was of their own species, which I often assisted myself, by stripping up my sleeves, and showing my naked arms and breast in their sight, when my protector was with me. At which times they would approach as near as they durst, and imitate my actions after the manner of monkeys, but ever with great signs of hatred; as a tame jackdaw with cap and stockings is always persecuted by the wild ones, when he happens to be got among them. They are prodigiously nimble from their infancy; however, I once caught a young male of three years old, and endeavoured by all marks of tenderness to make it quiet; but the little imp fell a squalling, and scratching, and biting with such violence, that I was forced to let it go; and it was high time, for a whole troop of old ones came about us at the noise, but finding the cub was safe (for away it ran), and my sorrel nag being by, they durst not venture near us. I observed the young animal’s flesh to smell very rank, and the stink was somewhat between a weasel and a fox, but

much more disagreeable. I forgot another circumstance (and perhaps I might have the reader’s pardon if it were wholly omitted), that while I held the odious vermin in my hands, it voided its filthy excrements of a yellow liquid substance, all over my clothes; but by good fortune there was a small brook hard by, where I washed myself as clean as I could; although I durst not come into my master’s presence, until I were sufficiently aired. By what I could discover, the Yahoos appear to be the most unteachable of all animals, their capacities never reaching higher than to draw or carry burdens. Yet I am of opinion, this defect ariseth chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition. For they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful. They are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly spirit, and by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel. It is observed, that the red-haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous

than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and activity. The Houyhnhnms keep the Yahoos for present use in huts not far from the house; but the rest are sent abroad to certain fields, where they dig up roots, eat several kinds of herbs, and search about for carrion, or sometimes catch weasels and luhimuhs (a

sort of wild rat), which they greedily devour. Nature hath taught them to dig deep holes with their nails on the side of a rising ground, wherein they lie by themselves; only the kennels of the females are larger, sufficient to hold two or three cubs. They swim from their infancy like frogs, and are able to continue long under water, where they often take fish, which the females carry home to their young. And upon this occasion, I hope the reader will pardon my relating an odd adventure.

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Being one day abroad with my protector the sorrel nag, and the weather exceeding hot, I entreated him to let me bathe in a river that was near. He consented, and I immediately stripped myself stark naked, and went down softly into the stream. It happened that a young female Yahoo, standing behind a bank, saw the whole proceeding, and inflamed by desire, as the nag and I conjectured, came running with all speed, and leaped into the water, within five yards of the place where I bathed. I was

never in my life so terribly frighted; the nag was grazing at some distance, not suspecting any harm. She embraced me after a most fulsome manner; I roared as loud as I could, and the nag came galloping towards me, whereupon she quitted her grasp, with the utmost reluctancy, and leaped upon the opposite bank, where she stood gazing and howling all the time I was putting on my clothes. This was matter of diversion to my master and his family, as well as of mortification to myself. For now I could no longer deny that I was a real Yahoo in every limb and feature, since the females had a natural propensity to me, as one of their own species. Neither was the hair of this brute of a red colour (which might have been some excuse for an appetite a little irregular), but black as a sloe, and her countenance did not make an appearance altogether so hideous as the rest of the kind; for, I think, she could not be above eleven years old. Having lived three years in this country, the reader I suppose will expect, that I should, like other travellers, give him some account of the manners and customs of

its inhabitants, which it was indeed my principal study to learn. As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature,

so their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it. Neither is reason among them a point problematical as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides of the question; but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it must needs do where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured by passion and interest. | remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either. So that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness in false or dubious propositions, are evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms. In the like manner when I used to explain to him our several systems of natural philosophy, he would laugh that a creature pretending to reason, should value itself upon the knowledge of other people’s conjectures, and in things, where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use. Wherein he agreed entirely with the sentiments of Socrates, as Plato delivers them; which I mention as

the highest honour I can do that prince of philosophers. I have often since reflected what destruction such a doctrine would make in the libraries of Europe; and how many paths to fame would be then shut up in the learned world. Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms; and these not confined to particular objects, but universal to the whole race. For a stranger from the remotest part is equally treated with the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes, looks upon himself as at home. They preserve decency

and civility in the highest degrees, but are altogether ignorant of ceremony. They

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have no fondness for their colts or foals, but the care they take in educating them proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason. And I observed my master to show the same affection to his neighbour’s issue that he had for his own. They will have it that nature teaches them to love the whole species, and it is reason only that maketh a distinction of persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue. When the matron Houyhnhnms have produced one of each sex, they no longer accompany with their consorts, except they lose one of their issue by some casualty, which very seldom happens; but in such a case they meet again, or when the like accident befalls a person whose wife is past bearing, some other couple bestow him one of their own colts, and then go together again till the mother is pregnant. This caution is necessary to prevent the country from being overburthened with numbers. But the race of inferior Houyhnhnms bred up to be servants is not so strictly limited upon this article; these are allowed to produce three of each sex, to be domestics in the noble families. In their marriages they are exactly careful to choose such colours as will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed. Strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female; not upon the account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for where a female happens to excel in strength, a consort is chosen with regard to comeliness. Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements, have no place in their thoughts; or terms whereby to express them in their language. The young couple meet and are joined, merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends: it is what they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being. But the violation of marriage, or any other unchastity, was never heard of: and the married pair pass their lives with the same friendship, and mutual benevolence that they bear to all others of the same species, who come in their way; without jealousy, fondness, quarrelling, or discontent. In educating the youth of both sexes, their method is admirable, and highly deserves our imitation. These are not suffered to taste a grain of oats, except upon certain days, till eighteen years old; nor milk, but very rarely; and in summer they graze two hours in the morning, and as many in the evening, which their parents likewise observe; but the servants are not allowed above half that time, and a great

part of their grass is brought home, which they eat at the most convenient hours, when they can be best spared from work. Temperance, industry, exercise, and cleanliness, are the lessons equally enjoined to the young ones of both sexes: and my master thought it monstrous in us to give the females a different kind of education from the males, except in some articles of domestic management; whereby as he truly observed, one half of our natives were good for nothing but bringing children into the world: and to trust the care of our children to such useless animals, he said, was yet a greater instance of brutality. But the Houyhnhnms train up their youth to strength, speed, and hardiness, by exercising them in running races up and down steep hills, and over hard stony grounds; and when they are all in a sweat, they are ordered to leap over head and ears

into a pond or a river. Four times a year the youth of a certain district meet to show their proficiency in running and leaping, and other feats of strength and agility; where the victor is rewarded with a song made in his or her praise. On this festival

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the servants drive a herd of Yahoos into the field, laden with hay, and oats, and milk, for a repast to the Houyhnhnms; after which, these brutes are immediately driven back again, for fear of being noisome to the assembly. Every fourth year, at the vernal equinox, there is a representative council of the

whole nation, which meets in a plain about twenty miles from our house, and continues about five or six days. Here they enquire into the state and condition of the several districts; whether they abound or be deficient in hay or oats, or cows or Yahoos. And wherever there is any want (which is but seldom), it is immediately sup-

plied by unanimous consent and contribution. Here likewise the regulation of children is settled: as for instance, if a Houyhnhnm hath two males, he changeth one of them with another that hath two females; and when a child hath been lost by any

casualty, where the mother is past breeding, it is determined what family in the district shall breed another to supply the loss.

CuapTeR 9. A grand debate at the general assembly of the Houyhnhnms, and how it was determined. The learning of the Houyhnhnms. Their buildings. Their manner of burials. The defectiveness of their language. One of these grand assemblies was held in my time, about three months before my departure, whither my master went as the representative of our district. In this council was resumed their old debate, and indeed, the only debate which ever happened in that country; whereof my master after his return gave me a very particular account. The question to be debated was, whether the Yahoos should be exterminated from the face of the earth. One of the members for the affirmative offered several arguments of great strength and weight, alleging, that as the Yahoos were the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animal which nature ever produced, so they were the most restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious: they would privately suck the teats of the Houyhnhnms’ cows, kill and devour their cats, trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually watched, and commit a thousand other extravagancies. He took notice of a general tradition, that Yahoos had not been always in that country; but, that many ages ago, two of these brutes appeared together upon a mountain; whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and slime, or from the ooze and froth of the sea, was never known. That these

Yahoos engendered, and their brood ina short time grew so numerous as to over-run and infest the whole nation. That the Houyhnhnms to get rid of this evil, made a general hunting, and at last enclosed the whole herd; and destroying the elder, every Houyhnhnm kept two young ones in a kennel, and brought them to such a degree of tameness, as an animal so savage by nature can be capable of acquiring; using them for draught and carriage. That there seemed to be much truth in this tradition, and that those creatures could not be Yinhniamshy (or aborigines of the land), because of the violent hatred the Houyhnhnms, as well as all other animals, bore them; which

although their evil disposition sufficiently deserved, could never have arrived at so high a degree, if they had been aborigines, or else they would have long since been rooted out. That the inhabitants taking a fancy to use the service of the Yahoos, had very imprudently neglected to cultivate the breed of asses, which were a comely

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animal, easily kept, more

tame

and orderly, without any offensive smell, strong

enough for labour, although they yield to the other in agility of body; and if their braying be no agreeable sound, it is far preferable to the horrible howlings of the Yahoos. Several others declared their sentiments to the same purpose, when my master proposed an expedient to the assembly, whereof he had indeed borrowed the hint from me. He approved of the tradition mentioned by the honourable member, who spoke before, and affirmed, that the two Yahoos said to be first seen among them, had been driven thither over the sea; that coming to land, and being forsaken by their companions, they retired to the mountains, and degenerating by degrees, became in process of time, much more savage than those of their own species in the country from whence these two originals came. The reason of this assertion was, that he had now in his possession a certain wonderful Yahoo (meaning myself),

which most of them had heard of, and many of them had seen. He then related to them, how he first found me; that my body was all covered with an artificial compo-

sure of the skins and hairs of other animals; that I spoke in a language of my own, and had thoroughly learned theirs: that I had related to him the accidents which brought me thither: that when he saw me without my covering, I was an exact Yahoo in every part, only of a whiter colour, less hairy, and with shorter claws. He added, how I had endeavoured to persuade him, that in my own and other countries the Yahoos acted as the governing, rational animal, and held the Houyhnhnms in servitude: that he observed in me all the qualities of a Yahoo, only a little more civilized by some tincture of reason, which however was in a degree as far inferior to the Houyhnhnm race, as the Yahoos of their country were to me: that, among other things, I mentioned a custom we had of castrating Houyhnhnms when they were young, in order to render them tame; that the operation was easy and safe; that it was no

shame to learn wisdom from brutes, as industry is taught by the ant, and building by the swallow. (For so I translate the word lyhannh, although it be a much larger fowl.) That this invention might be practised upon the younger Yahoos here, which, besides rendering them tractable and fitter for use, would in an age put an end to the whole species without destroying life. That in the mean time the Houyhnhnms should be exhorted to cultivate the breed of asses, which, as they are in all respects more valuable brutes, so they have this advantage, to be fit for service at five years old, which the others are not till twelve. This was all my master thought fit to tell me at that time, of what passed in the grand council. But he was pleased to conceal one particular, which related personally to myself, whereof I soon felt the unhappy effect, as the reader will know in its proper place, and from whence I date all the succeeding misfortunes of my life. The Houyhnhnms have no letters, and consequently their knowledge is all traditional. But there happening few events of any moment among a people so well united, naturally disposed to every virtue, wholly governed by reason, and cut off from all commerce with other nations, the historical part is easily preserved without burthening their memories. I have already observed, that they are subject to no diseases, and therefore can have no need of physicians. However, they have excellent medicines composed of herbs, to cure accidental bruises and cuts in the pastern or

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frog of the foot by sharp stones, as well as other maims and hurts in the several parts of the body. They calculate the year by the revolution of the sun and moon, but use no subdivision into weeks. They are well enough acquainted with the motions of those two luminaries, and understand the nature of eclipses; and this is the utmost progress of their astronomy. In poetry they must be allowed to excel all other mortals; wherein the justness of their similes, and the minuteness, as well as exactness of their descriptions, are

indeed inimitable. Their verses abound very much in both of these, and usually contain either some exalted notions of friendship and benevolence, or the praises of those who were victors in races, and other bodily exercises. Their buildings, although very rude and simple, are not inconvenient, but well contrived to defend them from all injuries of cold and heat. They have a kind of tree, which at forty years old loosens in the root, and falls with the first storm: It grows very straight, and being pointed like stakes with a sharp stone (for the Houyhnhnms know not the use of iron), they stick them erect in the ground about ten inches asunder, and then weave in oat-straw, or sometimes wattles betwixt them. The roof is made after the same manner, and so are the doors.

The Houyhnhnms use the hollow part between the pastern and the hoof of their fore-feet, as we do our hands, and this with greater dexterity than I could at first imagine. I have seen a white mare of our family thread a needle (which I lent her on purpose) with that joint. They milk their cows, reap their oats, and do all the work which requires hands, in the same manner. They have a kind of hard flints, which by grinding against other stones, they form into instruments, that serve instead of wedges, axes, and hammers. With tools made of these flints, they likewise cut their hay, and reap their oats, which there groweth naturally in several fields: The Yahoos draw home the sheaves in carriages, and the servants tread them in certain covered huts, to get out the grain, which is kept in stores. They make a rude kind of earthen and wooden vessels, and bake the former in the sun. If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried in the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his neighbours. I remember my master having once made an appointment with a friend and his family to come to his house upon some affair of importance; on the day fixed, the mistress and her two children came very late; she made two

excuses, first for her husband, who, as she said, happened that very morning to shnuwnh. The word is strongly expressive in their language, but not easily rendered into English; it signifies, to retire to his first mother. Her excuse for not coming sooner

was, that her husband dying late in the morning, she was a good while consulting her servants about a convenient place where his body should be laid; and I observed

she behaved herself at our house as cheerfully as the rest. She died about three months after. They live generally to seventy or seventy-five years, very seldom to fourscore: some weeks before their death they feel a gradual decay, but without pain. During this

Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, Chapter 10

time they are much visited by their friends, because they cannot go abroad with their usual ease and satisfaction. However, about ten days before their death, which they seldom fail in computing, they return the visits that have been made them by those who are nearest in the neighbourhood, being carried in a convenient sledge drawn by Yahoos; which vehicle they use, not only upon this occasion, but when they grow old, upon long journeys, or when they are lamed by any accident. And therefo re when the dying Houyhnhnms return those visits, they take a solemn leave of their friends, as if they were going to some remote part of the country, where they designed to pass the rest of their lives. I know not whether it may be worth observing, that the Houyhnhnms have no word in their language to express any thing that is evil, except what they borrow from the deformities or ill qualities of the Yahoos. Thus they denote the folly of a ser-

vant, an omission of a child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or

unseasonable weather, and the like, by adding to each the epithet of Yahoo. For instance, Hhnm Yahoo, Whnaholm Yahoo, Ynlhmndwihlma Yahoo, and an ill-contrived house Ynholmhnmrohlnw Yahoo. I could with great pleasure enlarge further upon the manners and virtues of this excellent people; but intending in a short time to publish a volume by itself expressly upon that subject, I refer the reader thither. And in the mean time, proceed to relate my own sad catastrophe.

CuaPTER 10. The Author's economy, and happy life among the Houyhnhnms. His great improvement in virtue, by conversing with them. Their conversations. The Author has notice given him by his master that he must depart from the country. He falls into a swoon for grief, but submits. He contrives andfinishes a canoe, by the help ofa fellowservant, and puts to sea at a venture.

I had settled my little economy to my own heart’s content. My master had ordered a room to be made for me after their manner, about six yards from the house; the sides

and floors of which I plastered with clay, and covered with rush-mats of my own contriving; I had beaten hemp, which there grows wild, and made of it a sort of ticking: this I filled with the feathers of several birds I had taken with springes made of Yahoos’ hairs, and were excellent food. I had worked two chairs with my knife, the sorrel nag helping me in the grosser and more laborious part. When my clothes were worn to rags, I made myself others with the skins of rabbits, and of a certain beautiful animal about the same size, called nnuhnoh, the skin of which is covered with a fine down. Of these I likewise made very tolerable stockings. I soled my shoes with wood which I cut from a tree, and fitted to the upper leather, and when this was worn out, I supplied it with the skins of Yahoos dried in the sun. I often got honey out of hollow trees, which I mingled with water, or eat with my bread. No man could

more verify the truth of these two maxims, That nature is very easily satisfied; and That necessity is the mother of invention. | enjoyed perfect health of body, and tranquillity of mind; I did not feel the treachery of inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries of a secret or open enemy. I had no occasion of bribing, flattering or pimping, to procure the favour of any great man or of his minion. I wanted no fence against fraud or oppression; here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor

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lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch my words and actions, or forge accusations against me for hire: here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, house-breakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtu-

osos; no leaders or followers of party and faction; no encouragers to vice, by seducement or examples; no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts, or pillories; no cheating shopkeepers or mechanics; no pride, vanity, or affectation; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores, or poxes; no ranting, lewd, expensive wives; no stupid, proud pedants; no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions; no scoundrels, raised from the dust for the sake of

their vices, or nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues; no lords, fiddlers, judges, or dancing-masters. I had the favour of being admitted to several Houyhnhnms, who came to visit or dine with my master; where his Honour graciously suffered me to wait in the room, and listen to their discourse. Both he and his company would often descend to ask me questions, and receive my answers. I had also sometimes the honour of attending my master in his visits to others. I never presumed to speak, except in answer to a question; and then I did it with inward regret, because it was a loss of so much time for improving myself: but I was infinitely delighted with the station of an humble auditor in such conversations, where nothing passed but what was useful, expressed in the fewest and most significant words; where (as I have already said) the greatest decency was observed, without the least degree of ceremony; where no person spoke without being pleased himself, and pleasing his companions; where there was no interruption, tediousness, heat, or difference of sentiments. They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence doth much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise

in their thoughts, which very much enlivened the discourse. Their subjects are generally on friendship and benevolence, or order and economy; sometimes upon the visible operations of nature, or ancient traditions; upon the bounds and limits of virtue; upon the unerring rules of reason, or upon some determinations to be taken at the next great assembly; and often upon the various excellencies of poetry. I may add, without vanity, that my presence often gave them sufficient matter for discourse, because it afforded my master an occasion of letting his friends into the history of me and my country, upon which they were all pleased to descant in a manner not very advantageous to human kind; and for that reason I shall not repeat what they said: only I may be allowed to observe, that his Honour, to my great admiration, appeared to understand the nature of Yahoos much better than myself. He went through all our vices and follies, and discovered many which I had never mentioned to him, by only supposing what qualities a Yahoo of their country, with a small proportion of reason, might be capable of exerting; and concluded, with too much probability, how vile as well as miserable such a creature must be. I freely confess, that all the little knowledge I have of any value, was acquired by the lectures I received from my master, and from hearing the discourses of him and his friends; to which I should be prouder to listen, than to dictate to the greatest and

wisest assembly in Europe. I admired the strength, comeliness, and speed of the

Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, Chapter 10

inhabitants; and such a constellation of virtues in such amiable persons produced in me the highest veneration. At first, indeed, I did not feel that natural awe which the Yahoos and all other animals bear towards them; but it grew upon me by degrees, much sooner than I imagined, and was mingled with a respectful love and gratitude, that they would condescend to distinguish me from the rest of my species. When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or human race in general, I considered them as they really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech, but making no other use of reason, than to improve and multiply those vices, whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them. When I happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common Yahoo, than of my own person. By conversing with the Houyhnhnms, and looking upon them with delight, I fell to imitate their gait and gesture, which is now grown into a habit, and my friends often tell me in a blunt way, that I trot like a horse;

which, however, I take for a great compliment. Neither shall I disown, that in speak-

ing I am apt to fall into the voice and manner of the Houyhnhnms, and hear myself ridiculed on that account without the least mortification. In the midst of all this happiness, and when I looked upon myself to be fully settled for life, my master sent for me one morning a little earlier than his usual hour. I observed by his countenance that he was in some perplexity, and at a loss how to begin what he had to speak. After a short silence, he told me, he did not know how I would take what he was going to say; that in the last general assembly, when the affair of the Yahoos was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family more like a Houyhnhnm than a brute animal. That he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could receive

some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them. The assembly did therefore exhort him, either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place from whence I came. That the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who had ever seen me at his house or their own: for they alleged, that because I had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be feared, I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the Houyhnhnms’ cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour.

My master added, that he was daily pressed by the Houyhnhnms of the neighbourhood to have the assembly’s exhortation executed, which he could not put off

much longer. He doubted it would be impossible for me to swim to another country, and therefore wished I would contrive some sort of vehicle resembling those I had described to him, that might carry me on the sea; in which work I should have the assistance of his own servants, as well as those of his neighbours. He concluded, that

for his own part, he could have been content to keep me in his service as long as I lived; because he found I had cured myself of some bad habits and dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as my inferior nature was capable, to imitate the Houyhnhnms.

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I should here observe to the reader, that a decree of the general assembly in this country is expressed by the word hnheoayn, which signifies an exhortation, as near as I can render it; for they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised, or exhorted; because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a rational creature. I was struck with the utmost grief and despair at my master’s discourse; and being unable to support the agonies I was under, Ifell into a swoon at his feet; when I came to myself, he told me, that he concluded I had been dead (for these people are subject to no such imbecilities of nature). I answered, in a faint voice, that death would have been too great an happiness; that although I could not blame the assembly’s exhortation, or the urgency of his friends; yet, in my weak and corrupt judgment, I thought it might consist with reason to have been less rigorous. That I could not swim a league, and probably the nearest land to theirs might be distant above an hundred: that many materials, necessary for making a small vessel to carry me off, were wholly wanting in this country, which, however, I would attempt in obedience and gratitude to his Honour, although I concluded the thing to be impossible, and therefore looked on myself as already devoted to destruction. That the certain prospect of an unnatural death was the least of my evils: for, supposing I should escape with life by some strange adventure, how could I think with temper’ of passing my days among Yahoos, and relapsing into my old corruptions, for want of examples to lead and keep me within the paths of virtue. That I knew too well upon what solid reasons all the determinations of the wise Houyhnhnms were founded, not to be shaken by arguments of mine, a miserable Yahoo; and therefore, after presenting him with my humble thanks for the offer of his servants’ assistance in making a vessel, and desiring a reasonable time for so difficult a work, I told him I would

endeavour to preserve a wretched being; and, if ever I returned to England, was not without hopes of being useful to my own species, by celebrating the praises of the renowned Houyhnhnms, and proposing their virtues to the imitation of mankind. My master in a few words made me a very gracious reply, allowed me the space of two months to finish my boat; and ordered the sorrel nag, my fellow-servant (for so at this distance I may presume to call him) to follow my instructions, because I told my master, that his help would be sufficient, and I knew he had a tenderness for me. In his company my first business was to go to that part of the coast where my rebellious crew had ordered me to be set on shore. I got upon a height, and looking on every side into the sea, fancied I saw a small island, towards the north-east: I took out my pocket-glass, and could then clearly distinguish it about five leagues off, as I computed; but it appeared to the sorrel nag to be only a blue cloud: for, as he had no conception of any country beside his own, so he could not be as expert in distinguishing remote objects at sea, as we who so much converse in that element. After I had discovered this island, I considered no farther; but resolved it should,

if possible, be the first place of my banishment, leaving the consequence to fortune.

'? with temper: Calmly.

Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, Chapter 1

I returned home, and consulting with the sorrel nag, we went into a copse at some distance, where I with my knife, and he with a sharp flint fastened very artifi-

cially,’ after their manner, to a wooden handle, cut down several oak wattles about

the thickness of a walking-staff, and some larger pieces. But I shall not trouble the reader with a particular description of my own mechanics; let it suffice to say, that in six weeks time, with the help of the sorrel nag, who performed the parts that required most labour, I finished a sort of Indian canoe, but much larger, covering it with the skins of Yahoos well stitched together, with hempen threads of my own making. My sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but I made use of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick; and I likewise provided myself with four paddles. I laid in a stock of boiled flesh, of rabbits and fowls, and took with me two vessels, one filled with milk, and the other with water. I tried my canoe ina large pond near my master’s house, and then corrected in it what was amiss; stopping all the chinks with Yahoos’ tallow, till I found it staunch, and able to bear me, and my freight. And when it was as complete as I could possibly make it, | had it drawn on a carriage very gently by Yahoos to the seaside, under the conduct of the sorrel nag, and another servant. When all was ready, and the day came for my departure, I took leave of my master and lady, and the whole family, my eyes flowing with tears, and my heart quite sunk with grief. But his Honour, out of curiosity, and, perhaps (if Imay speak it without vanity) partly out of kindness, was determined to see me in my canoe, and got several of his neighbouring friends to accompany him. I was forced to wait above an hour for the tide, and then observing the wind very fortunately bearing towards the island, to which I intended to steer my course, I took a second leave of my master: on

as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. For my detractors are pleased to think it improbable, that so illustrious a person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so inferior as I. Neither have I forgot, how apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have received. But if these censurers were better acquainted with the noble and courteous disposition of the Houyhnhnms, they would soon change their opinion. I paid my respects to the rest of the Houyhnhnms in his Honour’s company; then getting into my canoe, I pushed off from shore.

CHAPTER 11. The Author’s dangerous voyage. He arrives at New Holland, hoping to settle there. Is wounded with an arrow by one of the natives. Is seized and carried by force into a Portuguese ship. The great civilities of the Captain. The Author arrives at England. I began this desperate voyage on February 15, 1714-15, at 9 o'clock in the morning. The wind was very favourable; however, I made use at first only of my paddles; but considering I should soon be weary, and that the wind might chop about, I ventured

'3 artificially: Cunningly.

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to set up my little sail; and thus, with the help ofthe tide, I went at the rate ofaleague

and a half an hour, as near as I could guess. My master and his friends continued on the shore, till Iwas almost out of sight; and I often heard the sorrel nag (who always loved me) crying out, Hnuy illa nyha majah Yahoo, Take care of thyself, gentle Yahoo. My design was, if possible, to discover some small island uninhabited, yet sufficient by my labour to furnish me with the necessaries of life, which I would have thought a greater happiness than to be first minister in the politest court of Europe; so horrible was the idea I conceived of returning to live in the society and under the government of Yahoos. For in such a solitude as I desired, I could at least enjoy my own thoughts, and reflect with delight on the virtues of those inimitable Houyhnhnms, without any opportunity of degenerating into the vices and corruptions of my own species. The reader may remember what I related when my crew conspired against me, and confined me to my cabin. How I continued there several weeks, without know-

ing what course we took; and when I was put ashore in the long boat, how the sailors told me with oaths, whether true or false, that they knew not in what part of the world we were. However, I did then believe us to be about ten degrees southward of the Cape of Good Hope, or about forty-five degrees southern latitude, as I gathered from some general words I overheard among them, being I supposed to the southeast in their intended voyage to Madagascar. And although this were little better than conjecture, yet I resolved to steer my course eastward, hoping to reach the south-west coast of New Holland, and perhaps some such island as | desired, lying westward of it. The wind was full west, and by six in the evening I computed I had gone eastward at least eighteen leagues, when I spied a very small island about half a league off, which I soon reached. It was nothing but a rock with one creek, natu-

rally arched by the force of tempests. Here I put in my canoe, and climbing up a part of the rock, I could plainly discover land to the east, extending from south to north. I lay all night in my canoe; and repeating my voyage early in the morning, I arrived in seven hours to the south-east point of New Holland. This confirmed me in the opinion I have long entertained, that the maps and charts place this country at least three degrees more to the east than it really is; which thought I communicated many years ago to my worthy friend Mr. Herman Moll, and gave him my reasons for it, although he hath rather chosen to follow other authors. I saw no inhabitants in the place where I landed, and being unarmed, I was

afraid of venturing far into the country. I found some shellfish on the shore, and eat them raw, not daring to kindle a fire, for fear of being discovered by the natives. I continued three days feeding on oysters and limpets, to save my own provisions; and I fortunately found a brook of excellent water, which gave me great relief. On the fourth day, venturing out early a little too far, I saw twenty or thirty natives upon a height, not above five hundred yards from me. They were stark naked, men, women, and children round a fire, as I could discover by the smoke.

One of them spied me, and gave notice to the rest; five of them advanced towards

"4 creek: Bay or sheltered cove.

Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, Chapter 11

me, leaving the women

and children at the fire. 1 made what haste I could to the

shore, and getting into my canoe, shoved off: the savages observi ng me retreat, ran after me; and before I could get far enough into the sea, discharged an arrow, which wounded me deeply on the inside of my left knee (I shall carry the mark to my grave). |apprehended the arrow might be poisoned, and paddling out of the reach of their darts (being a calm day), I made a shift to suck the wound, and dress it as well as I could. I was at a loss what to do, for I durst not return to the same landing-place, but stood to the north, and was forced to paddle; for the wind, though very gentle, was against me, blowing north-west. As I was looking about for a secure landing-place, I saw a sail to the north-north-east, which appearing every minute more visible, I was in some doubt whether I should wait for them or no; but at last my detestation of the Yahoo race prevailed, and turning my canoe, I sailed and paddled together to the south, and got into the same creek from whence I set out in the morning, choosing rather to trust myself among these barbarians, than live with European Yahoos. I drew up my canoe as close as I could to the shore, and hid myself behind a stone by the little brook, which, as I have already said, was excellent water. The ship came within half a league of this creek, and sent her long boat with vessels to take in fresh water (for the place it seems was very well known), but I did not

observe it till the boat was almost on shore, and it was too late to seek another hiding-place. The seamen at their landing observed my canoe, and rummaging it all over, easily conjectured that the owner could not be far off. Four of them well armed searched every cranny and lurking-hole, till at last they found me flat on my face behind the stone. They gazed awhile in admiration at my strange uncouth dress; my coat made of skins, my wooden-soled shoes, and my furred stockings; from whence, however, they concluded I was not a native of the place, who all go naked. One of the seamen in Portuguese bid me rise, and asked who I was. I understood that language very well, and getting upon my feet, said, I was a poor Yahoo, banished from the Houyhnhnms, and desired they would please to let me depart. They admired to hear me answer them in their own tongue, and saw by my complexion I must be an European; but were at a loss to know what I meant by Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, and at the same time fell a laughing at my strange tone in speaking, which resembled the neighing of a horse. I trembled all the while betwixt fear and hatred. I again desired leave to depart, and was gently moving to my canoe; but they laid hold of me, desiring to know, what country I was of? whence I came? with many other questions. I told them, I was born in England, from whence I came about five years ago, and then their country and ours were at peace. I therefore hoped they would not treat me as an enemy, since I meant them no harm, but was a poor Yahoo, seeking some desolate place where to pass the remainder of his unfortunate life. When they began to talk, I thought I never heard or saw any thing so unnatural; for it appeared to me as monstrous as if a dog or a cow should speak in England, or a Yahoo in Houyhnhnm-land. The honest Portuguese were equally amazed at my strange dress, and the odd manner of delivering my words, which however they understood very well. They spoke to me with great humanity, and said they were sure their Captain would carry me gratis to Lisbon, from whence I might return to

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my own country; that two of the seamen would go back to the ship, inform the Captain of what they had seen, and receive his orders; in the mean

time, unless

I would give my solemn oath not to fly, they would secure me by force. I thought it best to comply with their proposal. They were very curious to know my story, but I gave them very little satisfaction; and they all conjectured that my misfortunes had impaired my reason. In two hours the boat, which went loaden with vessels of water, returned with the Captain’s command to fetch me on board. I fell on my knees to preserve my liberty; but all was in vain, and the men having tied me with cords, heaved me into the boat, from whence I was taken into the ship, and from thence

into the Captain’s cabin. His name was Pedro de Mendez; he was a very courteous and generous person; he entreated me to give some account of myself, and desired to know what I would

eat or drink; said, I should be used as well as himself, and spoke so many obliging things, that I wondered to find such civilities from a Yahoo. However, I remained

silent and sullen; I was ready to faint at the very smell of him and his men. At last I desired something to eat out of my own canoe; but he ordered me a chicken and some excellent wine, and then directed that I should be put to bed in a very clean cabin. I would not undress myself, but lay on the bed-clothes, and in half an hour

stole out, when I thought the crew was at dinner, and getting to the side of the ship was going to leap into the sea, and swim for my life, rather than continue among Yahoos. But one of the seamen prevented me, and having informed the Captain, I

was chained to my cabin. After dinner Don Pedro came to me, and desired to know my reason for so desperate an attempt; assured me he only meant to do me all the service he was able; and spoke so very movingly, that at last I descended to treat him like an animal which had some little portion of reason. I gave him a very short relation of my voyage; of the conspiracy against me by my own men; of the country where they set me on shore, and of my three years’ residence there. All which he looked upon as if it were a dream or a vision; whereat I took great offence; for I had quite forgot the faculty of lying, so peculiar to Yahoos in all countries where they preside, and, conse-

quently the disposition of suspecting truth in others of their own him, whether it were the custom in his country to say the thing assured him I had almost forgot what he meant by falsehood, and thousand years in Houyhnhnm-land, | should never have heard a lie

species. I asked that was not? I if I had lived a from the mean-

est servant; that I was altogether indifferent whether he believed me or no; but how-

ever, in return for his favours, I would give so much allowance to the corruption of his nature, as to answer any objection he would please to make, and then he might easily discover the truth. The Captain, a wise man, after many endeavours to catch me tripping in some part of my story, at last began to have a better opinion of my veracity. But he added, that since I professed so inviolable an attachment to truth, I must give him my word of honour to bear him company in this voyage, without attempting any thing against my life, or else he would continue me a prisoner till we arrived at Lisbon. I gave him the promise he required; but at the same time protested that I would suffer the greatest hardships rather than return to live among Yahoos.

Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, Chapter 11

Our voyage passed without any considerable accident. In gratitu de to the Captain I sometimes sat with him at his earnest request, and strove to conceal my antipathy to human kind, although it often broke out, which he suffered to pass without observation. But the greatest part of the day, I confined myself to my cabin, to avoid seeing any of the crew. The Captain had often entreated me to strip myself of my savage dress, and offered to lend me the best suit of clothes he had. This Iwould not be prevailed on to accept, abhorring to cover myself with any thing that had been on the back of a Yahoo. | only desired he would lend me two clean shirts, which having been washed since he wore them, I believed would not so much defile me. These I change d every second day, and washed them myself. We arrived at Lisbon, Nov. 5, 1715. At our landing the Captain forced me to cover

myself with his cloak, to prevent the rabble from crowding about me. I was conveyed to his own house, and at my earnest request, he led me up to the highest room backwards." I conjured him to conceal from all persons what I had told him of the Houyhnhnms, because the least hint of such a story would not only draw numbers of people to see me, but probably put me in danger of being imprisoned, or burnt by the Inquisition. The Captain persuaded me to accept a suit of clothes newly made; but I would not suffer the tailor to take my measure; however, Don Pedro being almost my size, they fitted me well enough. He accoutred me with other necessaries all new, which I aired for twenty-four hours before I would use them. The Captain had no wife, nor above three servants, none of which were suffered

to attend at meals, and his whole deportment was so obliging, added to very good human understanding, that I really began to tolerate his company. He gained so far upon me, that I ventured to look out of the back window. By degrees I was brought into another room, from whence I peeped into the street, but drew my head back in

a fright. In a week’s time he seduced me down to the door. I found my terror gradually lessened, but my hatred and contempt seemed to increase. I was at last bold enough to walk the street in his company, but kept my nose well stopped with rue, or sometimes with tobacco. In ten days, Don Pedro, to whom I had given some account of my domestic affairs,

put it upon me as a matter of honour and conscience, that I ought to return to my native country, and live at home with my wife and children. He told me, there was an English ship in the port just ready to sail, and he would furnish me with all things necessary. It would be tedious to repeat his arguments, and my contradictions. He said it was altogether impossible to find such a solitary island as I desired to live in; but I might command in my own house, and pass my time in a manner as recluse as I pleased. I complied at last, finding I could not do better. I left Lisbon the 24th day of November, in an English merchantman, but who was the master I never inquired. Don Pedro accompanied me to the ship, and lent me twenty pounds. He took kind leave of me, and embraced me at parting, which I bore as well as I could. During this last voyage I had no commerce with the master or any of his men; but pretending I was sick, kept close in my cabin. On the fifth of December, 1715, we cast anchor in

'Shighest . . . backwards: To the rear of the house, away from the street.

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the Downs about nine in the morning, and at three in the afternoon I got safe to my house at Rotherhith. My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because they concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely confess the sight of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt, and the more by reflecting on the near alliance I had to them. For, although since my unfortunate exile from the Houyhnhnm country, Ihad compelled myself to tolerate the sight of Yahoos, and to converse with Don Pedro de Mendez; yet my memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those exalted Houyhnhnms. And when I began to consider, that by copulating with one of the Yahoo species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror. As soon as | entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed me; at

which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for so many years, I fell in a swoon for almost an hour. At the time I am writing it is five years since my last return to England: during the first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my presence, the very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one of them take me by the hand. The first money I laid out was to buy two young stone-horses,'” which I keep in a good stable, and next to them the groom is my greatest favourite; for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in the stable. My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me, and friendship to each other. CHAPTER 12. The Author’s veracity. His design in publishing this work. His censure of those travellers who swerve from the truth. The Author clears himself from any sinister ends in writing. An objection answered. The method ofplanting colonies. Hts native country commended. The right of the Crown to those countries described by the Author, is justified. The difficulty of conquering them. The Author takes his last leave of the reader; proposeth his manner of living for the future, gives good advice, and concludes.

Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels for sixteen years and above seven months; wherein | have not been so studious of ornament as truth.

I could perhaps like others have astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee. It is easy for us who travel into remote countries, which are seldom visited by

Englishmen or other Europeans, to form descriptions of wonderful animals both at sea and land. Whereas a traveller’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better,

and to improve their minds by the bad as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places. I could heartily wish a law was enacted, that every traveller, before he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath before the Lord High

16 Stone-horses: Stallions.

Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, Chapter 12

Chancellor that all he intended to print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; for then the world would no longer be deceived as it usually is, while some writers, to make their works pass the better upon the public, impose the grossest falsities on the unwary reader. I have perused several books of travels with great delight in my younger days; but having since gone over most parts of the globe, and been able to contradict many fabulous accounts from my own observ ation, it hath given me a great disgust against this part of reading, and some indign ation to see the credulity of mankind so impudently abused. Therefore since my acquai ntance were pleased to think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, I imposed on myself as a maxim, never to be swerved from, that I would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and example of my noble master, and the other illustrious Houyhnhnms, of whom I had so long the honour to be an humble hearer. Nec si miserum Fortuna Sinonem Finxit, vanum etiam, mendacemque improba finget."”

I know very well how little reputation is to be got by writings which require neither genius nor learning, nor indeed any other talent, except a good memory, or an exact journal. I know likewise, that writers of travels, like dictionary-makers, are

sunk into oblivion by the weight and bulk of those who come after, and therefore lie uppermost. And it is highly probable, that such travellers who shall hereafter visit the countries described in this work of mine, may, by detecting my errors (if there be any), and adding many new discoveries of their own, justle me out of vogue, and stand in my place, making the world forget that I was ever an author. This indeed would be too great a mortification if I wrote for fame: But, as my sole intention was the puBLIC Goon, | cannot be altogether disappointed. For who can read of the virtues I have mentioned in the glorious Houyhnhnms, without being ashamed of his own vices, when he considers himself as the reasoning, governing animal of his country? I shall say nothing of those remote nations where Yahoos preside; amongst which the least corrupted are the Brobdingnagians, whose wise maxims in morality and government it would be our happiness to observe. But I forbear descanting farther, and rather leave the judicious reader to his own remarks and applications. I am not a little pleased that this work of mine can possibly meet with no censurers: for what objections can be made against a writer who relates only plain facts that happened in such distant countries, where we have not the least interest with respect either to trade or negotiations? I have carefully avoided every fault with which common writers of travels are often too justly charged. Besides, I meddle not the least with any party, but write without passion, prejudice, or ill-will against any man or number of men whatsoever. I write for the noblest end, to inform and IZ'Neciaare finget: Virgil, Aeneid 2, 79-80: “... fate may have made Sinon miserable, but she will never be able to

make him into a liar.” Sinon was the Greek who persuaded the Trojans to admit the wooden horse through their gates, and he was very much a liar; Gulliver ironically and unwittingly quotes these lines to attest to his own reliability.

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instruct mankind, over whom I may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority, from the advantages I received by conversing so long among the most accomplished Houyhnhnms. | write without any view towards profit or praise. I never suffer a word to pass that may look like reflection, or possibly give the least offence even to those who are most ready to take it. So that I hope I may with justice pronounce myself an author perfectly blameless, against whom the tribes of answerers, considerers, observers, reflecters, detecters, remarkers, will never be able to find

matter for exercising their talents. I confess, it was whispered to me, that I was bound in duty as a subject of England, to have given in a memorial to a Secretary of State, at my first coming over; —_—— because, whatever lands are discovered by a subject, belong to the Crown. But I doubt whether our conquests in the countries I treat of, would be as easy as those of Ferdinando Cortez over the naked Americans. The Lilliputians | think, are hardly worth the charge ofa fleet and army to reduce them; and I question whether it might be prudent or safe to attempt the Brobdingnagians; or whether an English army would be much at their ease with the Flying Island over their heads. The Houyhnhnms, indeed, appear not to be so well prepared for war, a science to which they are perfect strangers, and especially against missive weapons. However, supposing myself to be a minister of state, I could never give my advice for invading them. Their prudence, unanimity, unacquaintedness with fear, and their love of their country, would amply supply all defects in the military art. Imagine twenty thousand of them breaking into the midst of an European army, confounding the ranks, overturning the carriages, battering the warriors’ faces into mummy’® by terrible yerks” from their hinder hoofs; for they would well deserve the character given to Augustus: Recalcitrat undique tutus.” But instead of proposals for conquering that magnanimous nation, I rather wish they were in a capacity or disposition to send a sufficient number of their inhabitants for civilizing Europe, by teaching us the first principles of honour, justice, truth, temperance, public spirit, fortitude, chastity, friendship, benevolence, and fidelity. The names of all which virtues are still retained

among us in most languages and are to be met with in modern as well as ancient authors; which I am able to assert from my own small reading. But I had another reason which made me less forward to enlarge his Majesty’s dominions by my discoveries. To say the truth, I had conceived a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of princes upon these occasions. For instance, a crew of pirates are driven by a storm they know not whither; at length a boy discovers land from the topmast; they go on shore to rob and plunder; they see an harmless people, are entertained with kindness, they give the country a new name, they take formal possession of it for their king, they set up a rotten plank or a stone for a memorial, they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more by force for a sample, return home, and get their pardon. Here commences a new dominion

‘into mummy: Into powder; the modern equivalent would be “into a pulp.”

'yverks: Kicks. *°Recalcitrat . . . tutus: Horace, Satires 2:1:20; “He kicks backward, guarding himself at every point”

Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, Chapter 12

acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed, their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free licence given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbar ous people.

But this description, I confess, doth by no means affect the British nation, who may be an example to the whole world for their wisdom, care, and justice in planting colonies; their liberal endowments for the advancement of religion and learning;

their choice of devout and able pastors to propagate Christianity; their caution in stocking their provinces with people of sober lives and conversations from this the mother kingdom; their strict regard to the distribution of justice, in supplying the civil administration through all their colonies with officers of the greatest abilities , utter strangers to corruption; and to crown all, by sending the most vigilant and virtuous governors, who have no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they preside, and the honour of the King their master. But, as those countries which I have described do not appear to have any desire of being conquered, and enslaved, murdered or driven out by colonies; nor abound either in gold, silver, sugar, or tobacco; I did humbly conceive, they were by no means proper objects of our zeal, our valour, or our interest. However, if those whom it more concerns think fit to be of another opinion, I am ready to depose, when I shall be lawfully called, that no European did ever visit these countries before me. I mean, if the

inhabitants ought to be believed; unless a dispute may arise about the two Yahoos, said to have been seen many ages ago on a mountain in Houyhnhnm-land. But, as to the formality of taking possession in my Sovereign’s name, it never carne once into my thoughts; and if it had, yet as my affairs then stood, I should perhaps in point of prudence and self-preservation, have put it off to a better opportunity. Having thus answered the only objection that can ever be raised against me as a traveller, I here take a final leave of all my courteous readers, and return to enjoy my own speculations in my little garden at Redriff, to apply those excellent lessons of virtue which I learned among the Houyhnhnms; to instruct the Yahoos of my own family as far as I shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus if possible habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creature: to lament the brutality of Houyhnhnms in my own country, but always treat their persons with respect, for the sake of my noble master, his family, his friends, and the whole Houyhnhnm race, whom these of ours have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their intellectuals came to degenerate.

I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of along table; and to answer (but with the utmost brevity) the few questions I asked her. Yet the smell of a Yahoo continuing very offensive, I always keep my nose well stopped with rue, lavender, or tobacco leaves. And although it be hard for a man late in life to remove old habits, I am not altogether out of hopes in some time to suffer a neighbour Yahoo in my company, without the apprehensions I am yet under of his teeth or his claws. My reconcilement to the Yahoo-kind in general might not be so difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only which nature hath entitled them

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to. am not in the least provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamester, a politician, a whore-master, a physician, an evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to the due course of things: but when I behold a lump of deformity, and diseases both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience; neither "shall I be ever able to comprehend how such an animal and such a vice could tally ' together. The wise and virtuous Houyhnhnms, who abound in all excellencies that can adorn a rational creature, have no name for this vice in their language, which hath no terms to express any thing that is evil, except those whereby they describe the detestable qualities of their Yahoos, among which they were not able to distinguish this of pride, for want of thoroughly understanding human nature, as it showeth itself in other countries, where that animal presides. But I, who had more

experience, could plainly observe some rudiments of it among the wild Yahoos. But the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they possess, than I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm, which no man in his wits would boast of, although he must be miserable with-

out them. I dwell the longer upon this subject from the desire I have to make the society of an English Yahoo by any means not insupportable; and therefore I here entreat those who have any tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not presume to come in my sight.

Qy ALEXANDER POPE B. ENGLAND, 1688-1744 By 1737, the English poet Alexander Pope, physically impaired from childhood and nearing fifty, was already arranging and collating his poetry and his vast correspondence for final editions, as though he sensed his life were nearing its end. (He would, in fact, die at fifty-six.) In the midst of worsening physical ailments and the somber task of readying his work for posterity, Pope presented the Prince of Wales, with whom he had maintained a wary friendship, a puppy from his Great Dane Bounce’s new litter, together with a collar engraved with a couplet:' Iam his Highness’ Dog at Kew; Pray tell me Sir, whose Dog are you?

Minor verse, to be sure, but in a number of ways it embodies Pope’s work and times. Pope’s poetry grows out of and flourishes within an intensely

"couplet: A two-line, rhymed stanza. Pope was the master of the heroic couplet, an iambic-pentameter stanza that completes its thought within the closed two-line form, as in this example from An Essay on Man: Through worlds unnumber’d though the God be known, ’Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

Alexander Pope, 1688-1744

279

gossipy and self-conscious aristocratic society. The couplet is designed to be read and reacted to by people fawning over the royal puppy, their reactions observed by others in the know. The couplet itself is very economical, small enough to fit upon a dog collar, packing into its neat repetition of the word dog much comment about those who fawn, those who follow, and those who are owned. Pope is matchless for his compressed

subtlety, his ability to manipulate sound to convey thought. And finally, there is the darkness just beneath the surface of the playful gesture. Dogs are said to have pure hearts and to remain loyal even toward abusive owners. How many people had compromised their morality and judgment in the Prince’s court in return for a good dinner or some privilege? Avatar of a New Augustan Age. In his own time, Pope was mocked and despised for his work, his opinions, and his body, which was cruelly misshapen and weakened by tuberculosis of the spine. But he was also regarded as the poet among poets, the heir of the spirit of Western European poetry, the British writer against whom others must be measured. Physical deformities were fair game for satirists in Pope’s day, and vicious caricatures of the dwarfed and hunchbacked poet showed Pope’s head grotesquely topping the body of a spider or a monkey. At the same time, it became fashionable to paint and sculpt him nobly posed in the company of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Petrarch, and other forebears of the grand tradition of European literature. The ancestors whose traditions Pope most consciously sought to make new in his own Augustan Age’ were Roman classical authors. Horace’ is his model for the Moral Essays, where in easy, colloquial language he takes on the excesses and shortcomings of women, or landscape gardeners, or the moneyed aristocracy. Lucretius’s* De rerum natura inspired Pope and his contemporaries to present complex philosophical ideas in verse, as Pope does in his Essay on Man. Above all, the epic poets, chiefly Homer and Virgil, echo constantly in Pope’s poetry. His thorough knowledge of their poetry’s scope and music becomes transmuted in his brilliant Mock Epics’ The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714) and The Dunciad (1742), where contemporary people’s mundane affairs are depicted sur-

rounded by epic panoply partly to underscore their tawdriness. The pedantic scholar Colley Cibber,° the principal butt of The Dunciad,

Bd

For links to

more information

about Pope and the 2Ist-century relevance of An Essay on Man, see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit

compact.

? Augustan Age: Associated with the first half of the eighteenth century and with British Neoclassicism, the Augustan Age was named after the period when Augustus (63 B.c.E.—14 c.E.) ruled the Roman Empire and many of the great Latin poets, especially Horace and Virgil, flourished.

3 Horace (65 B.C.E.—8 B.C.E.): Greatest of the Latin lyric poets of the Augustan Age in Rome. * Lucretius (C. 99 B.C.E.—C. 55 B.C.E.): Latin poet who argued for a materialistic worldview in his philosophical

poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things).

5 mock epic: A form that parodies the epic by treating a trivial subject in an elevated style, employing such conventions of the form as the plea to a muse for inspiration, an extended simile, a heroic epithet, or descriptive title added to a person’s name. ® Colley Cibber (1671-1757): English dramatist and actor-manager, appointed poet laureate of England in 1730.

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builds a ceremonial bonfire of the writings he has been unable to sell in honor of the goddess Dulness, but just in time she stops him from burning these treasures and whisks him off to her sordid palace amid the fleamarkets of London in order to proclaim him her own dear heir. Other goddesses and their favorites from classical epics come to mind — Thetis and Achilles, Athene

and Odysseus, Venus

and Aeneas’

—but with a

mocking difference. Pope was celebrated not only for his technical mastery of rhyme and rhythm and his ability to catch the particular satiric spirit of the times: He also gave his contemporaries confidence that this new Augustan Age was indeed an extension of a great classical tradition that valued sense, treasured knowledge, and ridiculed folly.

In Pope | cannot read aline But with a sigh | wish it mine;

When he can in one

couplet fix More sense than | can do in six,

A Catholic Outsider. Pope was born in 1688 into a well-do-to Catholic linen merchant’s family in London, which was a fiercely anti-Catholic city. In 1711 the Pope family moved to a small farm in Windsor Forest, some thirty miles from London, where other Catholic families sought relief from persecution. Pope’s passion for country scenes and gardening began here in this gentle landscape. Fragile health limited his experience of both the natural world and school; his tubercular, hunched spine halted his growth at four feet six inches, and he was racked by fierce headaches and respiratory problems all his life. But the little boy’s mind was remarkable. He avidly read English, French, and Latin poetry, and his father encouraged him to write verses of his own. Pope’s Catholicism barred him from the universities, but he was determined to venture beyond his household. In 1705 he gained a ready education by walking boldly into Will’s Coffeehouse in London, where the famous writers of the older generation still gathered. Pope struck the old guard as an odd country bumpkin, but they recognized his genius, and by 1709 he had published his first poems, imitations of Virgil’s Eclogues.

It gives me sucha

jealous fit,

Literary Successes

I cry, “Pox take him and his wit!” — JONATHAN SwirT,

“Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift,” 1739

p. 227

in London.

In 1711

the

audacious

newcomer

brought out his Essay on Criticism, a long poem in which he dispensed literary criticism and wickedly satirized a number of his elders along the way. At twenty-three Pope was already famous and controversial, and in the next few years, between 1712 and 1714, he produced The Rape of the Lock, his brilliant mock-heroic account of a feud among society men and women. In that same year, Pope made a new set of extraordinary friends, mostly Tory and literary, whom he would keep for life, among them Jonathan Swift and John Gay.” Together they devised the character of a droning pedant named Martinus Scriblerus, for whom they invented a vast body of memoirs and correspondence. Swift and Pope especially spurred each other’s genius, but the circle of friends, many of whom held

’Thetis . . . Aeneas: The hero of the classical epic was usually supported and protected by a goddess, who was often his mother. In Homer’s Iliad, Thetis protects her son Achilles, as Venus does her son Aeneas in Virgil’s

Aeneid. Although Athene is not Odysseus’s mother, she acts as his guardian in the Iliad and the Odyssey. * John Gay (1685-1732): The English playwright and poet best known for The Beggar’s Opera (1728).

Alexander Pope, 1688-1744

281

Aubrey Beardsley, The Rape of the Lock, 1896

A nineteenth-century depiction of the title act of Pope’s famous mock epic. (Courtesy of the trustees of the Boston Public Library)

political offices, was scattered when Queen Anne died in 1714 and the

Tory government fell.

Country Life in Twickenham. Pope next translated Homer's The Iliad into English, a five-year project. In 1719, a year after his father’s death, he and his mother moved to a villa at Twickenham, on whose five acres he would exercise his passion for landscape gardening. He built a rustic grotto and outfitted it with a system of lamps and mirrors, enabling him

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Marcellus Laroon the Younger, A Concertat

Montagu House, 1735.

Pencil, Ink, and Wash

This drawing portrays a gathering in an aristocratic English home during Pope’s time. (The Courtauld

Institute Gallery, Somerset House, London)

to project on small surfaces, in tiny “moving images,” the river traffic on the Thames, much as he captured the social world of England in the

miniature frame of the heroic couplet. At Twickenham he entertained company, including a number of strong and intellectual women such as Martha Blount, with whom he had an enduring friendship. The Dunciad and Later Life. After his early and fast-paced start, the years between 1719 and 1728 were a sort of hiatus in Pope’s career, largely filled with editing Shakespeare, translating the classics, and landscape gardening. But in 1728 came the The Dunciad, a dark mock epic in which

Alexander Pope, 1688-1744

Pope took on not merely dunces, his personal literary enemies, but everything that embodied for him the petty corruption, shoddy art, and slipping standards that might quietly erode an entire culture. In 1743 an edition of the revised poem, complete with full names of the dunces whom it satirized, was offered to the public. Although Pope’s poetry now turned increasingly to moral and philosophical subjects such as those in An Essay on Man, Pope never stopped writing SATIRE; The Dunciad , in particular, kept appearing in ever more elaborate editions, and Pope remained a prolific writer to the end. He died of asthma on May 30, 1744,

after receiving the last rites of the church.

An Essay on Man. Dedicated to Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, An Essay on Man was published anonymously in 1733-34, a time when his satires such as The Dunciad had made Pope many enemies who would have immediately attacked the poem had they known it was from his hand. In the poem, Pope set out to “vindicate the ways of God to man” and to show the order and design of nature and the universe. That aim was not unlike Milton’s in Paradise Lost, to which Pope alludes in Epistle 1; but Pope, while drawing upon Greco-Roman philosophy, Christian theology, and Newtonian science, presents a more secular philosophical system than Milton’s. The four “epistles” of An Essay on Man embark upon a philosophical survey of “the nature and state of man’ in four aspects: with respect to the universe, to man himself, to society, and to happiness. The poem was conceived as part of a much larger, unfinished project, Moral Essays, wherein Pope hoped to elaborate a complete system of ethics. Four other poems of that grand project were completed before Pope’s death and are now known collectively as the Epistles to Several Persons. In the course of exploring the condition, relation, and purpose of human beings in the world, An Essay on Man attempts to set morals and manners in order by reminding human beings of their proper place in the order of things. Where the Essay on Criticism reconciles taste and poetics with the laws of nature,An Essay on Man describes a rational, hierarchical arrangement of everything in creation. Each plant, animal, and inanimate thing occupies its intended place, and all are linked in a grand system of interdependence that benefits the whole. Pope’s poem adduces the concept of the “great chain of being,” an idea of a hierarchically ordered universe that goes back as far as Plato and Aristotle. Important to this idea is that the beings occupying each link of the chain observe the laws providentially defined for their particular category. For most sentient beings, denied the luxury of free will, functioning within these parameters presents no problem at all, for without free will their destinies follow the laws of nature by necessity. Human beings, however, because of their free will, continually transgress those parameters,

thereby disturbing the order of things. This principle applies not just to the natural order but to the social, and even aesthetic, order. As Pope had cautioned critics as early as the Essay on Criticism (1711), “Nature to all things

fixed the limits fit, /And wisely curbed proud man’s pretending wit.” Epistles 1 and 2 of An Essay on Man suggest that human beings are wont to forget their place in the world, overstep their limits, and succumb to excesses—in reason or in passion. Such propensity to err by dint of free will defines the human lot. Rather than give in to error, however, the poems

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suggest that humans must strive to make a virtue of their capacity to err: they must act with self-consciousness and good judgment to temper and control, but not stifle, this capacity. Emphasizing the purposive interconnectedness of the world, Epistle 3 underscores the partiality of human knowledge in contrast to God’s wisdom. Thus, human claims to knowl-

edge and pride in human achievements should be made in moderation. In the words of Epistle 2, human beings are “darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, /With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride.” In the spirit of Enlightenment thought, Pope’s Essay on Man advises that as humans learn to cope with the contending forces that drive and divide family, community, and society, they must focus their glass upon those things within reach: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man.”

@ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography Mack, Maynard. Alexander Pope: A Life. 1985. Criticism Broich, Ulrich. The Eighteenth-Century Mock-Heroic Poem. 1990. Brown, Laura. Alexander Pope. 1985.

Knellwolf, Christa. A Contradiction Still: Representations of Women in the Poetry of Alexander Pope. 1998. Rogers, Pat. /ntroduction to Pope. 1975.

Rousseau, G. S., ed. Twentieth-Century Interpretations of The Rape of the Lock: A Collection of Critical Essays. 1969. Solomon, Harry M. The Rape of the Text: Reading and Misreading Pope’s Essay on Man. 1993.

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An Essay on Man To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke

EPISTLE 1

Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to the Universe Awake, my St. John!" leave all meaner things

To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die) Expatiate free® o’er all this scene of man;

roam freely

"St. John: Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Pope’s friend who is admonished here for not

keeping his part of the deal to write a companion set of philosophical reflections in prose.

An Essay on Man, Epistle 1

A mighty maze! but not without a plan; A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot, Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield; The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; Eye Nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;

But vindicate the ways of God to man.

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1. Say first, of God above, or man below, What can we reason, but from what we know? Of man, what see we but his station here, From which to reason, or to which refer? Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known, Tis ours to trace him only in our own. He, who through vast immensity can pierce, See worlds on worlds compose one universe, Observe how system into system runs, What other planets circle other suns, What varied being peoples every star, May tell why Heaven has made us as we are. But of this frame the bearings, and the ties, The strong connections, nice dependencies, Gradations just, has thy pervading soul Looked through? or can a part contain the whole? Is the great chain,’ that draws all to agree, And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee? 2. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,

Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind? First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less! 40

Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade? Or ask of yonder argent fields above, Why Jove’s satellites are less than Jove? 2 But vindicate . . . toman: Anallusion to John Milton’s Paradise Lost 1:26, where Milton declares the purpose of his epic is to “justify the ways of God to men.” 3 the great chain: The Great Chain of Being, the popular medieval and Renaissance concept that all things and beings in the universe are ordered in a graduated hierarchy with the basest elements, like lead, at the bottom, and God at the top; human beings occupied the center of this seamless continuum.

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Of systems possible, if tis confessed That Wisdom Infinite must form the best, Where all must full or not coherent be, And all that rises, rise in due degree; Then, in the scale of reasoning life, ’tis plain, There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man: And all the question (wrangle e’er so long) 50

Is only this, if God has placed him wrong? Respecting man, whatever wrong we call, May, must be right, as relative to all. In human works, though labored on with pain,

60

A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain; In God’s, one single can its end produce; Yet serves to second too some other use. So man, who here seems principal alone, Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. When the proud steed shall know why man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o’er the plains; When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,

Is now a victim, and now Egypt’s god: Then shall man’s pride and dullness comprehend His actions’ passions, being’s use and end; Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled; and why This hour a slave, the next a deity. 70

Then say not man’s imperfect, Heaven in fault; Say rather, man’s as perfect as he ought; His knowledge measured to his state and place, His time a moment, and a point his space. If to be perfect in a certain sphere, What matter, soon or late, or here or there?

The blest today is as completely so, As who began a thousand years ago. 3. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,

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All but the page prescribed, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,

And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. O blindness to the future! kindly given, That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven:

An Essay on Man, Epistle 1

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems? into ruin hurled, 90 And nowa bubble burst; and now a world. Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore! What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. Hope springs eternal in the human breast:

solar systems

Man never is, but always to be blest: The soul, uneasy and confined from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come. Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 100 Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky way; Yet simple Nature to his hope has given, Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,

Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold! To be, contents his natural desire,

10 He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company. 4. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense, Weigh thy opinion against Providence; Call imperfection what thou fancy’st such, Say, here he gives too little, there too much;

Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,° Yet cry, if man’s unhappy, God’s unjust; If man alone engross not Heaven’s high care, 120 Alone made perfect here, immortal there: Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,

Rejudge his justice, be the God of God! In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.

Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes, Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell, Aspiring to be angels, men rebel: And who but wishes to invert the laws 130 Of order, sins against the Eternal Cause.

taste

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5. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, Earth for whose use? Pride answers, “’ Tis for mine: For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings; For me, health gushes from a thousand springs; Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.” But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? “No,” tis replied, “the first Almighty Cause

150

Acts not by partial, but by general laws; The exceptions few; some change since all began, And what created perfect?” — Why then man? If the great end be human happiness, Then Nature deviates; and can man do less? As much that end a constant course requires Of showers and sunshine, as of man’s desires; As much eternal springs and cloudless skies, As men forever temperate, calm, and wise.

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven’s design,

Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?* Who knows but he whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar’s mind, 160

Or turns young Ammon?’ loose to scourge mankind? From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs; Account for moral, as for natural things: Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit? In both, to reason right is to submit. Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, Were there all harmony, all virtue here;

“Borgia, Catiline: Cesare Borgia (1476-1507), son of Pope Alexander VI; Renaissance Italian prince who was,

with other members of his powerful family, notorious for ruthless opportunism, greed, cruelty, and treachery. Lucius Sergius Catiline (c. 108-62 B.c.E.) was an ambitious and treacherous conspirator against the Roman state.

*>Ammon: Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.E.), king of Macedon, student of Aristotle, and powerful general

who extended his empire by subduing Greece, defeating the Persians, and pushing all the way to Egypt, where he founded the city Alexandria, and to India, where his armies refused to push farther.

An Essay on Man, Epistle 1

That never air or ocean felt the wind;

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That never passion discomposed the mind: But ALL subsists by elemental strife: And passions are the elements of life. The general orDER, since the whole began,

Is kept in Nature, and is kept in man.

6. What would this man? Now upward will he soar,

And little less than angel, would be more; Now looking downwards, just as grieved appears To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears. Made for his use all creatures if he call,

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Say what their use, had he the powers of all? Nature to these, without profusion, kind, The proper organs, proper powers assigned; Each seeming want compensated of course, Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;

All in exact proportion to the state; Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. Each beast, each insect, happy in its own; Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone? Shall he alone, whom rational we call, Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all? 190

The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. Say what the use, were finer optics given, To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia® darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? If nature thundered in his opening ears,

And stunned him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill? Who finds not Providence all good and wise,

Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

° effluvia: Streams of particles that were thought to convey sensory impressions to the brain.

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7. Far as creation’s ample range extends, The scale of sensual,° mental powers ascends: Mark how it mounts, to man’s imperial race, From the green myriads in the peopled grass: What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, The mole’s dim curtain, and the lynx’s beam: Of smell, the headlong lioness between, And hound sagacious on the tainted green:’ Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, To that which warbles through the vernal wood: The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice® bee, what sense so subtly true

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discriminating

From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew: How instinct varies in the groveling swine, Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine! >Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier,

Forever separate, yet forever near! Remembrance and reflection how allied;

What thin partitions sense from thought divide: And middle natures, how they long to join, Yet never pass the insuperable line! Without this just gradation, could they be 230

Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?

The powers of all subdued by thee alone, Is not thy reason all these powers in one? 8. See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,

All matter quick, and bursting into birth. Above, how high progressive life may go! Around, how wide! how deep extend below! Vast Chain of Being! which from God began,

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Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach! from Infinite to thee,

From thee to nothing. — On superior powers Were we to press, inferior might on ours: Or in the full creation leave a void,

Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed: From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike, Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

Of smell . . . green: The lioness, who has a poor sense of smell, rushes headlong at her quarry, unlike the hound whose acute sense of smell enables it to track its prey.

An Essay on Man, Epistle 1

And, if each system in gradation roll

Alike essential to the amazing whole, The least confusion but in one, not all 250

That system only, but the whole must fall. Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly, Planets and suns run lawless through the sky,

Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled, Being on being wrecked, and world on world,

Heaven’s whole foundations to their center nod, And Nature tremble to the throne of God: All this dread orpER break — for whom? for thee?

Vile worm! — oh, madness, pride, impiety!

9. What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,

Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head? What if the head, the eye, or ear repined To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?* Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains, The great directing mind of all ordains. All are but parts one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;

That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame, 270

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent, Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,

As the rapt seraph that adores and burns; To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals? all. 10. Cease then, nor order imperfection name: 280

Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.

Submit — In this, or any other sphere, Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:

Safe in the hand of one disposing Power, Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.

8Whatif .. . Mind?: Allusion to 1 Corinthians 12:14—26.

makes equal

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All Nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; 290

All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good: And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear: Whatever is, is RIGHT.

FROM EPISTLE 2

Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to Himself, as an Individual Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest, In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast; In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer, Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much:

Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus’d; Still by himself abus’d, or disabus’d; Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurld: The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! 20

Go, wondrous creature! mount where Science guides, Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;

Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, Correct old Time, and regulate the Sun; Go, soar with Plato to th empyreal sphere,’

To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; Or tread the mazy round his follow’rs trod,

And quitting sense call imitating God; As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,

*Go, soar . . . empyreal sphere: Pope suggests here that transcendental realm of the perfect Forms or Ideas described by Greek philosopher Plato (c. 427-347 B.c.k.) was located in the remotest sphere of the Ptolemaic

universe, which put the earth at the center of the universe, surrounded by nine spheres and the empyrean, the realm of the angels and God.

An Essay on Man, Epistle 2

And turn their heads to imitate the Sun. Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—

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Then drop into thyself, and be a fool! Superior beings, when of late they saw A mortal Man unfold all Nature’s law, Admir’d such wisdom in an earthly shape, And shewd a Newton’ as we shew an Ape. Could he, whose rules the rapid Comet bind, Describe or fix one movement of his Mind? Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend, Explain his own beginning, or his end? Alas what wonder! Man’s superior part Uncheck’d may rise, and climb from art to art: But when his own great work is but begun, What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone. Trace Science then, with Modesty thy guide; First strip off all her equipage of Pride, Deduct what is but Vanity, or Dress, Or Learning’s Luxury, or Idleness; Or tricks to shew the stretch of human brain,

50

Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain: Expunge the whole, or lop th’ excrescent parts Of all, our Vices have created Arts: Then see how little the remaining sum,

Which serv’d the past, and must the times to come! 2. Two Principles in human nature reign; Self-love, to urge, and Reason, to restrain; Not this a good, nor that a bad we call, Each works its end, to move or govern all: And to their proper operation still, Ascribe all Good; to their improper, IIL. 60

Self-love, the spring of motion, acts° the soul; Reason’s comparing balance rules the whole.

activates

Man, but for that, no action could attend,

And, but for this, were active to no end; Fix’d like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot; Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro’ the void, Destroying others, by himself destroy’d. Most strength the moving principle requires; Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires. Newton: Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), English physicist, mathematician, and scientist whose Mathematical

Principles of Natural Philosophy, known as the Principia (1687), was considered in Pope’s time to be the greatest example of human genius and scientific achievement.

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Sedate and quiet the comparing lies, Form’d but to check, delib’rate, and advise. Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh; Reason’s at distance, and in prospect lie: That sees immediate good by present sense; Reason, the future and the consequence.

Thicker than arguments, temptations throng, At best more watchful this, but that more strong.

The action of the stronger to suspend Reason still use, to Reason still attend: Attention, habit and experience gains, 80

Each strengthens Reason, and Self-love restrains.

Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight, More studious to divide than to unite, And Grace and Virtue, Sense and Reason split, With all the rash dexterity of Wit: Wits, just like fools, at war about a Name, Have full as oft no meaning, or the same. Self-love and Reason to one end aspire, Pain their aversion, Pleasure their desire;

But greedy that is object would devour, 90

This taste the honey, and not wound the flow’:

Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, Our greatest evil, or our greatest good. ... FROM EPISTLE 3

Of the Nature and State ofMan with respect to Society Here then we rest: “The Universal Cause Acts to one end, but acts by various laws.” In all the madness of superfluous health, The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth,

Let this great truth be present night and day; But most be present, if we preach or pray. 1. Look round our World; behold the chain of Love Combining all below and all above. See plastic Nature working to this end, The single atoms each to other tend, Attract, attracted to, the next in place Formed and impelled its neighbour to embrace. See Matter next, with various life endued,

Press to one centre still, the general Good.

An Essay on Man, Epistle 3

See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving vegetate again: All forms that perish other forms supply, (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)

2o

3 i=]

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Like bubbles on the sea of Matter born, They rise, they break, and to that sea return. Nothing is foreign: Parts relate to whole; One all-extending, all-preserving Soul Connects each being, greatest with the least: Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast; All served, all serving: nothing stands alone; The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown. Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good, Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food? Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn, For him as kindly spread the flowery lawn: Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings? Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings. Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat? Loves of his own and raptures swell the note. The bounding steed you pompously bestride, Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride. Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain? The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain. Thine the full harvest of the golden year? Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer: The hog, that ploughs not nor obeys thy call, Lives on the labours of this lord of all. Know, Nature’s children all divide her care;

The fur that warms a monarch, warmed a bear. While Man exclaims, “See all things for my use!”

“See man for mine!” replies a pampered goose: And just as short of reason He must fall, Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.

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Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism

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IMAGE: Jean Honoré Fragonard, The Love Letter MAP: Candide’s Travels

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Enlightenment and the Spirit of Inquiry 366 TIME AND PLACE: Eighteenth-Century France: The Encyclopedia Project

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FrRANcoIs-MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE B. FRANCE, 1694-1778

During the FRENCH REVOLUTION, more than ten years after his death, Voltaire’s bones were transported to Paris in a hearse inscribed “Poet, philosopher, historian, he gave wings to the human intelligence; he prepared us for freedom.” More than any other single person of the eighteenth century, Voltaire epitomizes in the breadth of his intellectual endeavors the Age of Enlightenment, which put its faith in human reason and a rational universe, championed human rights, and believed that reason could chart a commonsense path for improving the human condition. Voltaire was not an originator of ideas, but he took hold of the liberal precepts of his time—such as John Locke’s' theories on equality and human rights, Isaac Newton’s’ natural philosophy, and English deism— and became Catherine Lusurier, Portrait of Voltaire, the propagandist for these ideas in France and eventually throughout 1718. Oil on Canvas Europe. For more than sixty years he was an outspoken critic of French EE BB RE OR a RE EE ET RO Ke Ne I Le NR ae RE ER A ne SS Voltaire as a young society and for most of his life he was a refugee from his own country. man. (Réunion des

Musées Nationaux /

Art Resource, NY)

The Young Rebel. The facts of Voltaire’s life are a testimony to his lifelong desire to put ideas into action as well as to the power of his foes, who tried to silence his extraordinary voice. Voltaire was born Francois-Marie Arouet to a prosperous bourgeois family. He was introduced at an early

"John Locke (1632-1704): Influential English philosopher. In Essay Concerning Human

Understanding (1690),

he proposed that the human mind at birth is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, that experience fills up. (see p. 381) * Isaac Newton (1642-1727): Brilliant English mathematician and physicist who formulated the laws of gravity

and motion, thereby describing the physical workings of the cosmos and presenting it as a finely tuned machine.

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Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, 1694-1778

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|www | For links to more information

oltaire Serene” déism his entire life,teiteee the reas of his unending attacks on Christianity. He was given a solid classical education at a famous Jesuit school, College Louis-le-Grand. While in his teens he steered away from his father’s law profession and instead became involved with various social factions in Paris, where he wrote libelous poems for which he was briefly jailed and then exiled from France. At twenty-three he adopted the pen name of “Voltaire,” the exact meaning of which is unknown. His first serious literary efforts were in the theater; his play Oedipe (1718)’ was a financial success. In it the main culprit is God, who becomes responsible for the crimes of Oedipus and Jocasta. A popular epic poem, Le Henriade, celebrated Henry IV‘*asa champion of religious tolerance in the sixteenth century. In 1725, Voltaire’s life took a sharp turn. He was insulted by the chevalier de Rohan; Voltaire returned the insult and was beaten up by Rohan’s hired thugs, in full view of aristocrats whom Voltaire had previously thought of as friends. He challenged Rohan to a duel, but on the appointed day he was arrested, jailed, and exiled to England for almost three years, from 1726 to 1729. He was so impressed by English tolerance in the areas of religion and speech that he learned to speak and read English and became friends with Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and the English dramatist William Congreve (1670-1729). Voltaire gained access to the English court by way of Sir Robert Walpole, an important English statesman, and Lord Bolingbroke, a friend of writers and a gentleman philosopher. Voltaire also became acquainted with the

about Voltaire, a quiz on Candide, and information about the 2istcentury relevance of Candide, see bedford stmartins.com/ worldlitcompact.

Pp. 278, 227

writings and ideas of Shakespeare, Bacon,’ Locke, and Newton, and

with the English parliamentary system. Based on his experiences in England, he wrote Philosophical Letters (Lettres philosophiques); an English version was published in 1733 anda French edition in 1734. While complimenting English ways, it indirectly

criticized the abuses of French institutions. The book was condemned in France, copies of it were burned, and a warrant was issued for Voltaire’s arrest. This time, Voltaire was prepared for the attack; financially secure,

> Oedipe: The ancient myth of a king who killed his father and married his mother was first dramatized in ancient Greece by Sophocles (496-406 B.c.£.) in Oedipus the King.

“Henry IV: During a period of heavy religious persecution, Henry IV of France (1589-1610) issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted Protestants— especially the Huguenots — freedom of worship. 5 Bacon: English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) introduced empiricism— experiment and observation— to scientific thought.

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he took up residence with Emilie de Breteuil, Marquise du Chatelet, at the chateau of Cirey, situated in the independent duchy of Lorraine. At this refuge, Voltaire wrote plays and essays, experimented with physics in a laboratory, and supported the development of iron foundries. His book on the philosophy pf history, Essay on the Manners and the Spirit of Nations (1756), stretched the domain of history to include prebiblical and Asian

civilizations. He wrote a blizzard of essays and pamphlets attacking the corruption of his era and often published them under various pen names. His lucid writing style and biting wit, however, readily identified him. Diplomatic and Religious Difficulties. For several years, Frederick the Great of Prussia had been trying to entice Voltaire to his court in Potsdam, where he was creating a royal environment for art and ideas. Voltaire at last joined him, but this alliance of two extremely headstrong

The Love Letter, 1770. Oil on Canvas

This eighteenthcentury portrait

illustrates the vanity of French society in Voltaire’s time. (The Metropolitan Museum ofArt, The Jules Bache Collection, 1949.

All rights reserved, the Metropolitan Museum ofArt)

Fran¢ois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, 1694-1778

men was doomed. Voltaire was not cut from diplomatic cloth and soon was embroiled in intrigues and social power plays. The finale came when Maupertuis, the president of the Academy of Berlin, had the philosopher K6nig dismissed from the academy. Frederick backed Maupertuis and Voltaire took Kénig’s side, eventually publishing a lampoon of Maupertuis, Diatribe of Doctor Akaia (1752). Apparently, Voltaire obtained permission to publish this work by deceiving Frederick about the documents he was actually signing. Frederick burned the work and had Voltaire arrested. Having been denied a residence in France, Voltaire at sixty years of age bought a country house on the border between Geneva and France. At this house called Les Délices (The Delights), along with his mistress, Madame Denis, and his niece, he established his own literary “court,” along with a private theater where his plays were performed. Geneva, however, had a ban against theater of any kind, and again Voltaire’s freedoms were threatened. He persuaded a friend, Jean Le Rond

d’Alembert, to criticize Geneva’s prohibition in the Encyclopedia; JeanJacques Rousseau, the most famous citizen of Geneva, answered this

article and Voltaire in his important Letter to d’Alembert (1758), which

defended Geneva’s ban. Voltaire again had to move, and he bought Ferney, a large estate just inside the border of France but fronting on Lake Geneva. As the patriarch of Ferney, he experimented with a model agricultural community. During this time he also developed a stone quarry and built factories for manufacturing tiles, stockings, watches, and leather goods. He started schools and promoted fair wages and equitable taxes, and he actively defended victims of civil injustice. In one case, he rescued a young noblewoman from a convent and established her in his household, nicknaming her “Belle et Bonne” (“beautiful and good”). He

eventually matched her with the marquis of Villette. And all the while he played host to the most illustrious scientists, philosophers, and artists of his time. By 1760 his reputation as an opponent of Christianity had become almost legendary. In a letter to Voltaire, Denis Diderot addressed him as his “sublime, honorable and dear Anti-Christ.” Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary (1764) was a culminating diatribe against conventional religion and a delineation of his own brand of deism. Under the heading “Religion,” Voltaire discusses a deity who is a product of Copernicus and Newton, not the Bible. The Philosophical Dictionary was immediately condemned and burned by both Protestant and Catholic authorities. In February 1778, after an absence of twenty-eight years, Voltaire returned to Paris, where he was celebrated by the Académie Francaise, local and

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As for Voltaire . . . it

foreign dignitaries, and crowds of chanting Parisians. When he died ten

is impossible not to

weeks later, on May 30, he was denied burial by Christian authorities but

look upon him as

was secretly interred at the abbey of Scelliéres in Champagne.

a demon ofgrace,

wit, and very often also...

of good

sense and reason,

as a blind and brilliant elemental force, which is often lumi-

Candide. Voltaire’s literary output amounted to more than one hundred thirty-five volumes in a modern French edition. He wrote dozens of plays and novels, and his several histories focused on important political figures. But it is his philosophical tales, especially Zadig (1748) and Candide (1759), that have brought him the greatest

cannot be controlled,

fame since the eighteenth century. Voltaire writes didactic fiction; that is, he is always interested in teaching, in using his plot and characters

rather than a human

to develop arguments about contemporary issues. He is not concerned

and moral being.

with creating well-rounded characters. And he is less interested in the aesthetics of fiction than in the clarity of intellectual discussion. Generally, his technique is to express his opinions through various characters from history or mythology; a character might represent a particular philosophy. His plots using Asian characters and settings are mirrors continually reflecting back on Europe or France. Candide, whose very name suggests openness, is a naive optimist who has been educated by an impractical philosopher, Pangloss, whose name indicates a simplification of all experience. With his belief that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, Pangloss represents the ivory tower philosopher whose theories are radically disconnected from reality. In Chapter 5, Candide, wounded from the Lisbon earthquake, urgently begs for some wine and oil. Deaf to his request, Pangloss speculates: “This concussion of the earth is no new thing. . . the city of Lima in South America, experienced the same last year; the same cause, the same effects; there is certainly a vein of sulphur all the way underground from Lima to Lisbon.” Meanwhile, Candide faints. Voltaire’s BanelO>s Sa the German mathematician and

nous, a meteor that

— CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE,

“Voltaire and the

Président de Brosses,” 1850

The friend of kings and the implacable enemy of the Roman Church and indeed,

ofall institutional Christianity,

[Voltaire] was the most admired and dreaded writer of the

century, and by his unforgettable and

deadly mockery did more to undermine the foundations of

the established order than any ofits other

opponents. — ISAIAH BERLIN,

The Age of Enlightenment, 1956

pallose Dace”50

od

Wilhelm

Leibniz

(1646-1716), who claimed that

this world is the best of al eee worlds. Because the universe was created by a God whose plans are perfect, the universe must be perfect, too, been argued. It has been suggested that Voltaire is also satirizing 1 Wolff (1679-1754), another German mathematician and sieve who expressed the optimism and confidence of the age in a book titled Reasonable Thoughts on God, the World, and the Soul of Man, Also on Things in General. In fact, Voltaire is ridiculing any simplistic explanation for the complexities of experience, any universal principle that is applied unquestioningly to every situation. In particular he satirizes any religious belief that accounts for human disasters such as

Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, 1694-1778

the Lisbon earthquake by reference to an ultimate good or a beneficent Providence. Although evil might be justified as some form of good ora mystery in God’s ultimate plan, Voltaire prefers to link evil to human choice and weakness. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 produced hardship that optimists had difficulty explaining away: The innocent suffered in hospitals, in homes, and on the streets. In all his works, Voltaire’s real enemy is complacency, any attitude or theory that seems content with the present state of affairs. No particular Christian denomination, whether Protestant or Catholic, is safe from Voltaire’s scorn. In one adventure after another, Candide is exposed to the treachery and immorality, the greed and lust just below the surface of political officials, military commanders, and religious professionals. This wide range of experiences and the work’s short chapters keep Candide entertaining and engaging. In Candide’s search for situations that would confound Pangloss’s philosophy, he finally meets Martin, a thoroughgoing pessimist. Steering a philosophical course between the two extremes, Candide arrives in Constantinople and is rejoined by his former comrades, including his beloved Lady Cunégonde. Candide’s adjustments to all the changes in their respective lives leads to conclusions about living the simple life. He proposes a practical, modest realism; the importance of work is alluded to in the enigmatic dictum that ends the work: “We must cultivate our garden.” @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography Besterman, Theodore. Voltaire. 1976. Brailsford, Henry N. Voltaire. 1935. Wade, Ira O. The Intellectual Development of Voltaire. 1969. Intellectual History Keener, F. M. The Chain ofBeing. 1983. Criticism Cullter, M., ed. The Enlightenment and the Comic Mode. 1990. Gay, Peter. Candide. 1963. . Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist. 1959. Wade, Ira O. Voltaire and Candide: A Study in the Fusion of History, Art, and

Philosophy. 1959. @ PRONUNCIATION

Cunégonde: koo-nay-GOHND Giroflée: zhee-roh-FLAY Oreillons: oh-ray-YAWNG Voltaire: vohl-TEHR

koo-nay-GOHND

301

302

TEXT IN CONTEXT:

Qe

FRANCOIS-MARIE AROUET

DE VOLTAIRE

Candide, or Optimism

Translated from the German ofDr. Ralph. With the Additions Found in the Doctor's Pocket When He Died at Minden in the Year of Our Lord 1759 Translated by Daniel Gordon

CHAPTER 1

How Candide was brought up in afine castle, and how he was driven out ofit In the land of Westphalia,’ in the castle of the Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, lived a

youth endowed by nature with the gentlest of characters. His face was the mirror of his soul. His judgment was quite sound, his mind simple as could be; this is the reason, I think, that he was named Candide.[he old servants of the house suspected

that he was the son of the Baron’s sister and of a good and honorable gentleman of the region whom that lady refused to marry because he could prove only seventyone generations’ of noble lineage, the rest of his family tree having been lost in the shadows of time.

Her daughter Cunégonde,’ ae venteent was rosyaeeaieel fresh, plump, and appetizing. The Baron’s son seemed to be the equal of his father in every way. The tutor Pangloss’ was the oracle of the household, and little Candide absorbed his HE pate all the Sue a ofhis ace and character. -cosmolo-| ’ He proved admirably that there is no HR Cation a cause and that, in this best of all possible

"Westphalia: A region in northwestern Germany. The fictional translator, Doctor Ralph, supposedly died there at the battle of Minden during the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). “Thunder-ten-tronckh” is Voltaire’s

parodic name for the estate.

* seventy-one generations: The number, amounting to two thousand years of uninterrupted nobility, is meant to be ridiculously high. ° Cunégonde: From Queen Kunigunda, the wife of Holy Roman Emperor Henry II (973-1024). She proved her

fidelity by walking barefoot and blindfolded over hot irons; hence, her name adds to Voltaire’s irony. *Pangloss: “All tongue” (from Greek).

* cosmolo-boobology: Voltaire uses “cosmolo-nigologie,” containing the hidden French word nigaud, meaning simpleton; the translator uses “boob” to convey the same meaning in English.

HOLLAND.

Portsmouth (23) : ere ieppeg

With the Bulgars (2)

)

Again and again Jefferson urged that

hy

i,

ts

jf

lo Gp hiheepe tt

Soff CbI70 Mi

e Setlitle

tiiil

/

re

© Ay t ae

f

the people be edu-

cated and informed through a broad common-school system and a free

press. Although he had small faith

in the power of

republics to resist corruption and decay, he hoped

that mass educa-

tion would stem this degenerative process. — RICHARD HOFSTADTER, 1948

Anglo-Saxon grammar, and he designed his beautiful home at Monticello and the halls of the University of Virginia. Jefferson became governor of Virginia in 1779 and founded the Uni-

versity of Virginia in 1819. Before his political career was finished he succeeded Benjamin Franklin’ as a minister to France (1785), served as the first U.S. Secretary of State (1790-93), the second vice-president of the United States (1797-1801), and its third president (1801-09). His one

book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1782), is a compendium of personal and scientific observations about Virginia’s landscape and people as well as observations on slavery, race, environment, and revolution. Jefferson is best remembered, however, for the Declaration of Independence (1776), a

document of stunning rhetorical power and clarity. In the spring of 1776, as the war with England heated up and Thomas Paine’s* pamphlet, Common Sense, was preaching the politics of

"Benjamin Franldin (1706-1790): Scientist, publisher, and inventor who served the United States as a diplomat in Great Britain and France.

* Thomas Paine (1737-1809): Libertarian English writer who worked for the American colonies during the American Revolution.

Jefferson: Declaration of Independence

independence, the Second Continental Congress appointed a committee of five to draft a formal declaration of independence. Although the committee as a whole generated the ideas and Franklin and John Adams’ edited the work, Jefferson was largely responsible for the first version of the document. It was written in the tradition of the English Bill of Rights

His attachment to those of his friends whom he could make useful to himself was

thoroughgoing and

(1689), which defines the limits of the monarchy and enumerates certain

exemplary.

inviolable political and civil rights of the English citizenry. It was not simply a declaration of independence; it was a succinct philosophical statement defending the principles by which such an act of separation might take place, justifying the American Revolution. The document is organized in three parts: a statement of the rational basis for having and supporting government; a detailed description of the abuses of the English government; and a logical, inevitable conclusion that independence is right and necessary. The Declaration of Independence is a splendid example of a philosophical manifesto put into practice as a basis for a

— JOHN Quincy

ApaMs, Diary, 1836

Constitution and new form of democratic government. Jefferson died on

the fiftieth anniversary of its signing, July 4; 1826.

Ow

Declaration of Independence IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States ofAmerica

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they

are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,

it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence,

indeed, will dictate that Governments

long established

should

not be

changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right

3John Adams

(1735-1826): Delegate to the Second Continental Congress and member

397

of the committee

responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence. He became the second president of the United States (1797-1801).

398

IN THE WORLD:

ENLIGHTENMENT

AND THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY

themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be

elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to

harass our People, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislature. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

Jefferson: Declaration of Independence

In

CONGRESS.

399

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400

IN THE WORLD:

ENLIGHTENMENT

AND THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the High Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose Known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People. Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They

too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General

Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of

Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797

401

Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolve d from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Ow

Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT B. ENGLAND, 1759-1797

Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 in London, where she received a for-

mal education and was called on to help support her family, whose modest fortunes her father had lost. After nursing her dying mother, at the age of nineteen Wollstonecraft founded a school for girls in Islington and then another in Newington Green, where Dr. Richard Price encouraged the inquisitive and intelligent woman to read the works of the ENLIGHTENMENT philosophers. After unhappy relationships with the painter Henry Fuseli and the American entrepreneur and gambler Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft eventually married William Godwin, the most respected radical philosopher of the time and author of the important Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). In addition to treatises on women’s rights, Wollstonecraft wrote books on the French Revolution, education, and travel as well as two novels. She died in September 1797, about ten days

after giving birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft’s first work, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1786), promoting an enlightened view of education for women, paved the way for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a full-blown critique of education for women and a defense of women’s rights. Although the way had been partially prepared in England by Mary Astell’s Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700) and Catherine Macaulay’s Letters on Education (1790), Wollstonecraft’s

treatise pointed more

directly to the blatant

injustice of the present “false system of education” for women, particularly the kind

of education

advocated

in Jean Jacques

Rousseau’s

Emile.

Wollstonecraft attacks Rousseau’s ideal woman, Sophy, arguing that she is a model for no more than a man’s plaything—trained in superficial conversation, shallow thinking, and frivolous accomplishments. For Wollstonecraft, Sophy symbolizes a false ideal of woman subordinated to wrong-headed social conventions and education that makes women into “alluring objects for the moment” —toys for the amusement and titillation of men. Such women not only become subordinate to and dependent on men for their economic and social standing, but they are prevented from

Let woman share the

rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must

grow more perfect when emancipated,

orjustify the authority that chains sucha

weak being to her

duty. — Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT,

A Vindication of the

Rights of Woman

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AND THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY John Opie, Mary

Wollstonecraft,

c. 1790-91 This portrait was painted when Wollstonecraft was thirty-one or thirtytwo years old. (Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource)

developing into capable and contributing citizens. Cultivated as ornamental objects, women cannot form rational friendships with or earn the respect of their husbands, who, as a result, turn to affairs with younger women when their wives lose their “charms.” Wollstonecraft asserts that women must receive an education that will prepare them to build marriages based not on subordination and passion, as Rousseau would have it, but on equal partnership and levelheaded friendship with men. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman elicited a strong reaction from many conservative writers, who attacked Wollstonecraft’s character and free thinking. After her untimely death, her husband added fuel to this fire by publishing, rather naively, a candid biography of her life, Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Eventually Wollstonecraft found sympathetic readers among the budding feminist writers of the nineteenth century, including the English writers Mary Hays and Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), and the American feminists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who organized the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 (see p. 1063).

A note on the text: Wollstonecraft’s spelling and punctuation have been modernized. All notes are the editors’ unless otherwise indicated.

Wollstonecraft: A Vindication ofthe Rights of Woman FROM

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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman INTRODUCTION TO THE First EDITION

After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have sighed when obliged to confess, that either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken

place in the world has been very partial. I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result?—a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make

them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect. In a treatise, therefore, on female rights and manners, the works which have

been particularly written for their improvement must not be overlooked; especially when it is asserted, in direct terms, that the minds of women are enfeebled by false refinement; that the books of instruction, written by men of genius, have had the

same tendency as more frivolous productions; and that, in the true style of Mahometanism, they are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species, when improveable reason is allowed to be the dignified distinc-

tion which raises men above the brute creation, and puts a natural sceptre in a feeble hand. Yet, because I am a woman, I would not lead my readers to suppose that I mean violently to agitate the contested question respecting the quality or inferiority of the sex; but as the subject lies in my way, and I cannot pass it over without subjecting the main tendency of my reasoning to misconstruction, I shall stop a moment to deliver, in a few words, my opinion. In the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. A degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore, be denied—and it is a noble

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prerogative! But not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the

fellow creatures who find amusement in their society. — from every quarter have I heard exclamaI am aware of an obvious inference: tions against masculine women; but where are they to be found? If by this appellation men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, I shall most cordially join in the cry; but if it be against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the attainment of those talents and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human

character, and which raise females in the scale of

animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind;—all those who view them with a philosophic eye must, I should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine. This discussion naturally divides the subject. I shall first consider women in the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth

to unfold their faculties; and afterwards I shall more particularly point out their peculiar designation. I wish also to steer clear of an error which many respectable writers have fallen into; for the instruction which has hitherto been addressed to women, has rather

been applicable to ladies, if the little indirect advice, that is scattered through Sandford and Merton,' be excepted; but, addressing my sex in a firmer tone, I pay particular attention to those in the middle class, because they appear to be in the most natural state. Perhaps the seeds of false refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and affections of their race, in a premature unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society! As a class of mankind they have the strongest claim to pity; the education of the rich tends to render them vain and helpless, and the unfolding mind is not strengthened by the practice of those duties which dignify the human character. They only live to amuse themselves, and by the same law which in nature invariably produces certain effects, they soon only afford barren amusement. But as I purpose taking a separate view of the different ranks of society, and of the moral character of women, in each, this hint is, for the present, sufficient; and I

have only alluded to the subject, because it appears to me to be the very essence of an introduction to give a cursory account of the contents of the work it introduces. My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead

of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists—I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft

‘Sandford and Merton: The History of Sandford and Merton (1783-89), a popular children’s book by Thomas Day.

Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt. Dismissing, then, those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex; and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone. This is a rough sketch of my plan; and should I express my conviction with the energetic emotions that I feel whenever I think of the subject, the dictates of experience and reflection will be felt by some of my readers. Animated by this important object, I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style; —I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, or in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed about things, not words! and, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation. These pretty superlatives, dropping glibly from the tongue, vitiate the taste, and create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns away from simple unadorned truth; and a deluge of false sentiments and overstretched feelings, stifling the natural emotions of the heart, render the domestic pleasures insipid, that ought to sweeten the exercise of those severe duties, which educate a rational and immortal being for a nobler field of action. The education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments; meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves, —the only way women can rise in the world, —by marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry they act as such children may be expected to act: they dress; they paint, and nickname God’s creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for a seraglio! —Can they be expected to govern a family with judgment, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world? If then it can be fairly deduced from the present conduct of the sex, from the prevalent fondness for pleasure which takes place of ambition and those nobler passions that open and enlarge the soul; that the instruction which women have hitherto received has only tended with the constitution of civil society, to render them insignificant objects of desire—mere propagators of fools! —if it can be proved that in aiming to accomplish them, without cultivating their understandings, they are

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taken out of their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when the short-

lived bloom of beauty is over,” I presume that rational men will excuse me for endeavouring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable. Indeed the word masculine is only a bugbear: there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude; for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength, must render them, in some degree, dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why should it be increased by prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths with sensual reveries?

Women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when | assert, that this artificial weakness

produces a propensity to tyrranize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantine airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. Let men become more chaste and modest, and if women do not grow wiser in the same ratio, it will be clear that they

have weaker understandings. It seems scarcely necessary to say, that I now speak of the sex in general. Many individuals have more sense than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium, without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.

*A lively writer, Icannot recollect his name, asks what business women turned of forty have to do in the world? [Wollstonecraft’s note.]

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JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU B. FRANCE, 1712-1778

Often considered a precursor to and certainly one of the greatest influences on the European Romantic movement, Jean-Jacques Rousseau rediscovered

(if not reinvented) the inner life for an era otherwise occupied with external

accomplishments and achievements. While other philosophers sought to promote, through the corrosive acid of sATIRE, a more humane and Just society that acted in accordance with the tenets of reason, Rousseau found the seat of humanity and justice in the record of his own life, in the history of the growth of his own reason and feelings. The Confessions, written

between 1765 and 1770 but published posthumously from 1781 to 1788,

records Rousseau’s tortuous journey into the depths of his being, his pilgrimage to the childhood origins of the self. For Lord Byron,' the great English Romantic poet, Rousseau was the “apostle of affliction” who “threw / Enchantment over passion, and from woe / Wrung overwhelming eloquence” (Childe Harold III, Canto 77). In recording these thoughts about

sentiment and feeling, Rousseau exerted an influence on Western thought that still informs our discussions of art, literature, politics, society, and human nature.

Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Detail

from Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Pastel

Separation from Family. of Isaac Rousseau,

Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712, the son

a watchmaker who was exiled when Jean-Jacques was

ten years old, and Susanne Bernard, who died a few days after the boy’s birth. His father introduced Jean-Jacques at a young age to the contemporary novels his mother had left behind and then to the classics, and to this reading Rousseau attributes the birth of his intensity of feeling. Upon Isaac’s exile, father and son were separated, and Jean-Jacques moved in with his uncle, who set him up as an engraver’s apprentice. After three unhappy years, in March 1728 the young man rather impulsively left Geneva, beginning a brief period of vagabondage through Europe, taking up jobs ranging from footman to tutor.

A portrait of the philosopher as a young man. (Giraudon / Art Resource, NY)

For links to

Citizen of Geneva. Ending up eventually in Turin, Rousseau converted to Catholicism and moved in with thirty-year-old Madame de Warens, with whom he lived at Chambery and at her country house at Les Charmettes until 1742. During these years Rousseau continued his self-education, keeping extensive notes on a wide range of subjects, including science, mathematics, astronomy, and music. In 1742 Rousseau left for Paris, where

he received the patronage of Madame Dupin, among others; fell in love with Thérése Levasseur (among others), a laundress whom he would eventually marry; met Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, the editors of the

more information about Rousseau,

a quiz on Confessions, and information about the 2ist-

century relevance of Confessions, see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

‘Lord Byron: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), celebrated English Romantic poet, known for his creation of the Byronic hero, a gloomy, self-tormented outcast whose heroic desire and defiance of authority give him a dubious freedom (see pp. 722, 759).

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Encyclopedia; and took up his writing in great earnest. In 1750, at the age of thirty-eight, he earned a prize from the Academy of Dijon for his Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and began making a name for himself as a writer of plays and operas, especially The Village Soothsayer, performed first in 1752. Two years later, while visiting Geneva, Rousseau converted back to Protestantism. Over the next decade, the “Citizen of Geneva,’ as Rousseau sometimes called himself, penned a succession of important

philosophical treatises, works of criticism, and fiction, including Discourse

on Inequality (1755), Julie, or the New Heloise (1761), The Social Contract (1762), and Emile (1762). In Letter to d’Alembert on Plays (1758), an impor-

tant work that would set Rousseau apart from Voltaire and other philosophes, Rousseau rejected Voltaire’s plan to bring a theater to Geneva. Defending the prohibition of theaters in Geneva, he argued that drama corrupts its audiences and wastes money. But by 1762, Rousseau had written Emile and The Social Contract,

pitting himself against the authorities. His demand in these works for individual liberties, his indictment of government and European civilization for inevitably corrupting the innate goodness of human beings, and his ideas for political reform exceeded the tolerance of those in power. On June 9, 1762, the Parlement of Paris issued a warrant for Rousseau’s arrest, and ten days later the Advisory Council of Geneva banned and burned both books.

Exile. Rousseau’s flight from Paris only began a pattern of persecution and expulsion that took him across Europe— from Motiers, a territory in Prussia, to the Isle of Saint-Pierre; back to Paris, where he assumed various aliases; to England on the invitation of the philosopher David Hume; and finally back to Paris, where he was allowed to remain from 1770 until his death in 1778, even though the order for his arrest was not rescinded.

In his last years he wrote the moving and troubled Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1782), in which he attempts to vindicate his life and work to posterity. This work records the isolation and alienation brought on by years of persecution and hostile criticism. Rousseau’s Julie

Society and Feeling.

“changed the ways

Economy, both published in 1755, as well as The Social Contract, focus on the

in which people

place of the individual in society and the means by which corrupt systems of

thought and felt

government, education, and culture erode the basic goodness of human beings. In the novels Julie, or the New Heloise and Emile Rousseau again

and acted.” — Maurice CRANSTON,

The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1991

408

Discourse on Inequality and Discourse on Political

addresses the corruption of human beings by government and civilization, emphasizing the role that nature and feeling play in the development of the self. In his novels, as in his other writings, he upholds the virtues of childhood innocence, contemplative communication with nature, and the perfectibility of society. Rousseau’s ideas became a part of and some would say inaugurated European ROMANTICISM, and many European writers of the early nineteenth century followed in Rousseau’s footsteps, setting off along an inner path in search of a self that could transcend or escape the effects of social conditioning and acculturation.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778

The Confessions. A revolutionary work of self-reflection and selfinvention, Confessions covers Rousseau’s life through 1766, when he went to England to begin working on his autobiography in earnest. Although he completed the manuscript in 1770, Confessions was not published until after his death in 1778. The work appeared in two parts: Books 1 through 6 in 1781; Books 7 through 12 in 1788. The first chapter from Confessions is characteristic of the whole in its unabashed revelation of intimate details, its bold claims to honesty, if not accuracy, and its not always successful negotiation between narcissism and humility. This last feature of the work often presents difficulties for some readers, who, unconvinced by Rousseau’s claims,

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The real object of my Confessions is, to contribute to an accurate knowledge

of my inner being in all the different

situations of

my life. — Rousseau,

find him mired in self-pity and even arrogance. Full disclosure of one’s personal life, however, always invites such criticism, and even Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, in which Franklin avoids discussing the intimate details of his personal life, often walks a fine line between self-invention and self-revelation, vanity and sincerity. Certainly Rousseau’s autobiography anticipates, perhaps even initiates, the movement toward the selfconscious display of emotion and the confessional mode of Romantic and post-Romantic European writing of the next two centuries. The Confessions parades before its readers a succession of errors, misfortunes, and

misdeeds. Ironically, perhaps, Rousseau presents these faults to show that he is at heart a man of virtue and sensitivity, that truth and goodness are woven into the very fabric of his being. So far as the actual details of incidents in his life go, Rousseau admits to imprecision; but he argues that he cares more to present a record of his feelings than an account of events. Although some note a certain disingenuousness in the autobiography, Rousseau’s Confessions introduced to the Age of Enlightenment “the man of feeling,” a person who attempts to bring the mind into balance with the heart through self-reflection, acts of compassion, and an appreciation of the delicate interplay of emotion involved in human relationships. Yet, like other Enlightenment writers who satirize the affectation and hypocrisy of their age, Rousseau distinguishes between true feeling and artificial manners. A key concept in his work is amour propre, or the love of social approval. Governed by amour propre, he says, a person loses touch with his or her true self, for his or her actions and manners are oriented toward winning the approval and respect of others. Thus, marking a transition between the Enlightenment and the age of Romanticism, Rousseau seeks in Confessions and other writings to achieve a kind of transparency of the self, to express the true rather than the false self. Confessions in particular purports to be the “artless” record of the life and feelings of a man who was essentially honest and innately good, despite the faults and errors that clutter the course of his life. In this regard, Rousseau’s autobiography may be usefully compared to St. Augustine’s;’ but whereas Augustine attributes his essential goodness and salvation to the grace of God, Rousseau finds the source of his goodness in human nature itself.

St. Augustine (354—430 C.£.): The Bishop of Hippo, who became one of the most influential theologians of the Christian church through his writings, the spiritual autobiography Confessions (397-400) and The City of God (412-26). (See Augustine, Volume Te)

Confessions

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JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography

Cranston, Maurice. The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1991.

. The Solitary Self Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity. 1997.

, enno 1948-52. Jean-Jacques. GuéhJean. Winwar, Frances. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Conscience of an Era. 1983.

Criticism France, Peter. Rousseau, Confessions. 1987.

Kavanaugh, Thomas M. Writing the Truth: Authority and Desire in the Works of Rousseau. 1987.

Kelly, Christopher. Rousseau’s Exemplary Life: The Confessions as Political Philosophy. 1987. . Rousseau as Author: Consecrating One’s Life to Truth. 2003. Shklar, Judith. Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory. 1969. Starobinski, Jean. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction. 1971; trans. 1988.

Williams, Huntington. Rousseau and Romantic Autobiography. 1983. @ PRONUNCIATION

Bossey: baw-SEE Ducommun: doo-kom-OON

Goton: goh-TOHNG Lambercier: lahm-behr-SYAY Masseron: mahs-ROHNG Jean-Jacques Rousseau: zhawng-zhahk roo-SOH Verrat: veh-RAH de Vulson: duh vool-SOHNG

FROM

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Confessions Translator anonymous

Book 1

[1712-1719]

Uniqueness

Of GH indivia- | uals like

; Let the trumpet of the Day of Judgment sound when it will, I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand. I will say boldly: “This is what

Confessions

I have done, what I have thought, what I was. I have told the good and the bad with equal frankness. I have neither omitted anything bad, nor interpolated anything good. If Ihave occasionally made use of some immaterial embellishments, this has only been in order to fill a-gap caused by lack of memory. I may have assumed the truth of that which I knew might have been true, never of that which I knew to be false. I have shown myself as I was: mean and contemptible, good, highminded and sublime, according as I was one or the other. I have unveiled my inmost self even as Thou hast seen it, O Eternal Being. Gather round me the countle ss host of my fellow-men; let them hear my confessions, lament for my unwort hiness, and blush for my imperfections. Then let each of them in turn reveal, with the same frankness,

the secrets of his heart at the foot of the Throne, and say, if he dare, ‘I was better than

that man!” I was born at Geneva, in the year 1712, and was the son of Isaac Rousseau and Susanne Bernard, citizens. The distribution of a very moderate inheritance amongst fifteen children had reduced my father’s portion almost to nothing; and his only means of livelihood was his trade of watchmaker, in which he was really very clever. My mother, a daughter of the Protestant minister Bernard, was better off. She was clever and beautiful, and my father had found difficulty in obtaining her hand. Their affection for each other had commenced almost as soon as they were born. When only eight years old, they walked every evening upon the Treille;! at ten, they were inseparable. Sympathy and union of soul strengthened in them the feeling produced by intimacy. Both, naturally full of tender sensibility, only waited for the moment when they should find the same disposition in another—or, rather, this moment waited for them, and each abandoned his heart to the first which opened to receive it. Destiny, which appeared to oppose their passion, only encouraged it. The young lover, unable to obtain possession of his mistress, was consumed by grief. She advised him to travel, and endeavour to forget her. He travelled, but without result, and

returned more in love than ever. He found her whom he loved still faithful and true. After this trial of affection, nothing was left for them but to love each other all their lives. This they swore to do, and Heaven blessed their oath. Gabriel Bernard, my mother’s brother, fell in love with one of my father’s sisters, who only consented to accept the hand of the brother, on condition that her own brother married the sister. Love arranged everything, and the two marriages took place on the same day. Thus my uncle became the husband of my aunt, and their children were doubly my first cousins. At the end of a year, a child was born to both, after which they were again obliged to separate. My uncle Bernard was an engineer. He took service in the Empire and in Hungary, under Prince Eugéne.’ He distinguished himself at the siege and battle of Belgrade. My father, after the birth of my only brother, set out for Constantinople, whither he was summoned to undertake the post of watchmaker to the Sultan. During his

'Treille: A popular walk or promenade in Geneva. ?Empire . . . Eugéne: The Austrian empire; Eugene was an Austrian general who served in the wars against Turkey.

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absence, my mother’s beauty, intellect, and talents gained for her the devotion of numerous admirers. M. de la Closure, the French Resident, was one of the most eager to offer his. His passion must have been great, for, thirty years later, I saw him greatly affected when speaking to me of her. To enable her to resist such advances, my mother had more than her virtue: she loved her husband tenderly. She pressed him to return; he left all, and returned. I was the unhappy fruit of this return. Ten months later I was born, a weak and ailing child; I cost my mother her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes. I have never heard how my father bore this loss, but I know that he was inconsolable. He believed that he saw his wife again in me, without being able to forget that it was I who had robbed him of her; he never embraced me without my perceiving, by his sighs and the convulsive manner in which he clasped me to his breast, that a bitter regret was mingled with his caresses, which were on that account only the more tender. When he said to me, “Jean Jacques, let us talk of your mother,” I used to —and this word alone was sufficient answer, “Well, then, my father, we will weep!” to move him to tears. “Ah!” said he, with a sigh, “give her back to me, console me for

her loss, fill the void which she has left in my soul. Should I love you as I do, if you were only my son?” Forty years after he had lost her, he died in the arms of a second wife, but the name of the first was on his lips and her image at the bottom of his heart. Such were the authors of my existence. Of all the gifts which Heaven had bestowed upon them, a sensitive heart is the only one they bequeathed to me; it had been the source of their happiness, but for me it proved the source of all the misfortunes of my life. I was brought into the world in an almost dying condition; little hope was entertained of saving my life. I carried within me the germs of a complaint which the course of time has strengthened, and which at times allows me a respite only to make me suffer more cruelly in another manner. One of my father’s sisters, an amiable and virtuous young woman, took such care of me that she saved my life. At this moment, while I am writing, she is still alive, at the age of eighty, nursing a husband younger than herself, but exhausted by excessive drinking. Dear aunt,’ I forgive you for having preserved my life; and I deeply regret that, at the end of your days, I am unable to repay the tender care which you lavished upon me at the beginning of my own. My dear old nurse Jacqueline is also still alive, healthy and robust. The hands which opened my eyes at my birth will be able to close them for me at my death. I felt before I thought: This is the common lot of humanity. I experienced it more than others. I do not know what I did until I was five or six years old. I do not know how I learned to read; I only remember my earliest reading, and the effect it had upon me; from that time I date my uninterrupted self-consciousness. My mother had left some romances behind her, which my father and I began to read after supper. At first it was only a question of practising me in reading by the aid of amusing books; but soon the interest became so lively, that we used to read in turns

* aunt: Madame Gonceru, to whom Rousseau paid a small stipend.

Confessions

without stopping, and spent whole nights in this occupation. We were unable to leave off until the volume was finished. Sometimes, my father, hearing the swallows begin to twitter in the early morning, would say, quite ashamed, “Let us go to bed; I am more of a child than yourself.” In a short time I acquired, by this dangerous method, not only extreme facility in reading and understanding what I read, but a knowledge of the passions that was unique in a child of my age. I had no idea of things in themselves, althoug h all the feelings of actual life were already known to me. I had conceived nothing, but felt everything. These confused emotions which I felt one after the other, certainl y did not warp the reasoning powers which I did not as yet possess; but they shaped them in me of a peculiar stamp, and gave me odd and romantic notions of human life, of which experience and reflection have never been able wholly to cure me.

[1719-1723] The romances came to an end in the summer of 1719. The following winter brought us something different. My mother’s library being exhausted, we had recourse to the

share of her father’s which had fallen to us. Luckily, there were some good books in

it; in fact, it could hardly have been otherwise, for the library had been collected by a

minister, who was even a learned man according to the fashion of the day, and was at

the same time a man of taste and intellect. The “History of the Empire and the Church,” by Le Sueur; Bossuet’s “Treatise upon Universal History”; Plutarch’s “Lives of Famous Men’; Nani’s “History of Venice”; Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”; La Bruyeére; Fontenelle’s “Worlds”; his “Dialogues of the Dead”; and some volumes of Moligre— oo

ae

>.

Scaevola: The legendary Roman hero; when about to be executed for attempting to kill the Etruscan chief Lars Porsena, who was attacking Rome, Scaevola (which means “left-handed”) held his right hand in fire to

show his determination. The chief was so impressed that he withdrew his forces from Rome.

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table, those present were alarmed to see me come forward and hold my hand over a chafing-dish, to illustrate his action. I had a brother seven years older than myself, who was learning my father’s trade. The excessive affection which was lavished upon myself caused him to be somewhat neglected, which treatment I cannot approve of. His education felt the consequences of this neglect. He took to evil courses before he was old enough to be a regular profligate. He was put with another master, from whom he was continually running away, as he had done from home. | hardly ever saw him; I can scarcely say that I knew him; but I never ceased to love him tenderly, and he loved me as much as a vagabond can love anything. I remember that, on one occasion, when my father was chastising him harshly and in anger, I threw myself impetuously between them and embraced him closely. In this manner I covered his body with mine, and received the blows which were aimed at him; I so obstinately maintained my position that at last my father was obliged to leave off, being either disarmed by my cries and tears, or afraid of hurting me more than him. At last, my brother turned out so badly that he ran away and disappeared altogether. Sometime afterwards we heard that he was in Germany. He never once wrote to us. From that time nothing more has been heard of him, and thus I have remained an only son. If this poor boy was carelessly brought up, this was not the case with his brother; the children of kings could not be more carefully looked after than I was during my early years—worshipped by all around me, and, which is far less common, treated as a beloved, never as a spoiled child. Till I left my father’s house, I was never once allowed to run about the streets by myself with the other children; in my case no one ever had to satisfy or check any of those fantastic whims which are attributed to Nature, but are all in reality the result of education. I had the faults of my age: I was a chatterbox, a glutton, and, sometimes, a liar. Iwould have stolen fruits, bonbons, or eatables; but I have never found pleasure in doing harm or damage, in accusing others, or in tormenting poor dumb animals. I remember, however, that I once

made water in a saucepan belonging to one of our neighbours, Madame Clot, while she was at church. I declare that, even now, the recollection of this makes me laugh,

because Madame Clot, a old grumbler I have ever offences. How could I become before my eyes, and none

good woman in other respects, was the most confirmed known. Such is the brief and true story of all my childish

wicked, when I had nothing but examples of gentleness around me but the best people in the world? My father, my

aunt, my nurse, my relations, our friends, our neighbours, all who surrounded me,

did not, it is true, obey me, but they loved me; and I loved them in return. My wishes were so little excited and so little opposed, that it did not occur to me to have any. I can swear that, until I served under a master, I never knew what a fancy was. Except

during the time I spent in reading or writing in my father’s company, or when my nurse took me for a walk, I was always with my aunt, sitting or standing by her side, watching her at her embroidery or listening to her singing; and I was content. Her cheerfulness, her gentleness, and her pleasant face have stamped so deep and lively an impression on my mind that I can still see her manner, look, and attitude; I remember her affectionate language: I could describe what clothes she wore and how her head

Confessions

was dressed, not forgetting the two little curls of black hair on her temples, which she wore in accordance with the fashion of the time. Iam convinced that it is to her I owe the taste, or rather passion, for music, which

only became fully developed in me a long time afterwards. She knew a prodigious number of tunes and songs which she used to sing in a very thin, gentle voice. This excellent woman’s cheerfulness of soul banished dreaminess and melancholy from herself and all around her. The attraction which her singing posses sed for me was so great, that not only have several of her songs always remained in my memory, but even now, when I have lost her, and as I grew older, many of them, totally forgott en since the days of my childhood, return to my mind with inexpressible charm. Would anyone believe that I, an old dotard, eaten up by cares and troubles, sometimes find myself weeping like a child, when I mumble one of those little airs in a voice already broken and trembling? One of them, especially, has come back to me completely, as far as the tune is concerned; the second half of the words, however, has obstinately resisted all my efforts to recall it, although I have an indistinct recollection of the rhymes. Here is the beginning, and all that I can remember of the rest: Tircis, I dare not listen To your pipe Under the elm;

For already in our village People have begun to talk.

... to engage ... with a shepherd ... without danger And always the thorn is with the rose.°

I ask, where is the affecting charm which my heart finds in this song? it is a whim, which I am quite unable to understand; but, be that as it may, it is absolutely impossible for me to sing it through without being interrupted by my tears. I have intended, times without number, to write to Paris to make inquiries concerning the

remainder of the words, in case anyone should happen to know them; but I am almost certain that the pleasure which I feel in recalling the air would partly disappear, if it should be proved that others besides my poor aunt Susan have sung it. Such were my earliest emotions on my entry into life; thus began to form or display itself in me that heart at once so proud and tender, that character so effeminate but yet indomitable, which, ever wavering between timidity and courage, weakness

and self-control, has throughout my life made me inconsistent, and has caused abstinence and enjoyment, pleasure and prudence equally to elude my grasp. This course of education was interrupted by an accident, the consequences of which have exercised an influence upon the remainder of my life. My father had a quarrel with a captain in the French army, named Gautier, who was connected with some of the members of the Common Council. This Gautier, a cowardly and insolent

°Rousseau’s text deliberately leaves out the sixth line of this popular song: “It is dangerous for a heart.”

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fellow (whose nose happened to bleed during the affray), in order to avenge himself, accused my father of having drawn his sword within the city walls. My father, whom they wanted to send to prison, persisted that, in accordance with the law, the accuser ought to be imprisoned as well as himself. Being unable to have his way in this, he preferred to quit Geneva and expatriate himself for the rest of his life, than to give way ona point in which honour and liberty appeared to him to be compromised. I remained under the care of my uncle Bernard, who was at the time employed upon the fortifications of Geneva. His eldest daughter was dead, but he had a son of the same age as myself. We were sent together to Bossey,’ to board with the Protestant minister Lambercier, in order to learn, together with Latin, all the sorry trash which is included under the name of education. Two years spent in the village in some degree softened my Roman roughness and made me a child again. At Geneva, where no tasks were imposed upon me, I loved reading and study, which were almost my only amusements; at Bossey, my tasks made me love the games which formed a break in them. The country was so new to me, that my enjoyment of it never palled. I conceived so lively an affection for it, that it has never since died out. The remembrance of the happy days I have spent there filled me with regretful longing for its pleasures, at all periods of my life, until the day which has brought me back to it. M. Lambercier was a very intelligent person, who, without neglecting our education, never imposed excessive tasks upon us. The fact that, in spite of my dislike of restraint, I have never recalled my hours of study with any feeling of disgust —and also that, even if I did not learn much from him, I learnt without difficulty what I did learn and never forgot it—is sufficient proof that his system of instruction was a good one. The simplicity of this country life was of inestimable value to me, in that it opened my heart to friendship. Up to that time I had only known lofty but imaginary sentiments. The habit of living peacefully together with my cousin Bernard drew us together in tender bonds of union. In a short time, my feelings towards him became more affectionate than those with which I had regarded my brother, and

they have never been effaced. He was a tall, lanky, weakly boy, as gentle in disposition as he was feeble in body, who never abused the preference which was shown to him in the house as the son of my guardian. Our tasks, our amusements, our tastes were the same: we were alone, we were of the same age, each of us needed a companion: separation was to us, in a manner, annihilation. Although we had few opportunities of proving our mutual attachment, it was very great; not only were we unable to live an instant apart, but we did not imagine it possible that we could ever be separated. Being, both of us, ready to yield to tenderness, and docile, provided com pulsion was not t used, we MEN, agreed in progthiae ,

’Bossey: A village three miles from Geneva.

Confessions

“more active mind always led the way.In short, our two characters harmonised so well, and the friendship which united us was so sincere, that, in the five years and more, during which, whether at Bossey or Geneva, we were almost inseparable, although I confess that we often fought, it was never necessa ry to separate us, none of our quarrels ever lasted longer than a quarter of anhour, and neither of us ever ~ made any accusation against the other.These observations are, if you will, childish, but they furnish an example

which, since the time that there have been children, is

perhaps unique. j The life which I led at Bossey suited me so well that, had it only lasted longer, it would have completely decided my character. Tender, affectionate, and gentle feel-

ings formed its foundation. Ibelieve that no individual of our species was naturally

more free from vanity than myself. Iraised myself by fits and starts to lofty flights, _ but immediately fell down again into my natural languor. My liveliest desire was to be loved by all who came near me. I was of a gentle disposition; my cousin and our guardians were the same. During two whole years I was neither the witness nor the victim of any violent feeling. Everything nourished in my heart those tendencies which it received from Nature. I knew no higher happiness than to see all the world satisfied with me and with everything. I shall never forget how, if I happened to hesitate when saying my catechism in church, nothing troubled me more than to observe signs of restlessness and dissatisfaction on Mademoiselle Lambercier’s face. That alone troubled me more than the disgrace of failing in public, which, nevertheless, affected me greatly: for, although little susceptible to praise, I felt shame keenly; and I may say here that the thought of Mademoiselle’s reproaches caused me less uneasiness than the fear of offending her. When it was necessary, however, neither she nor her brother were wanting in severity; but, since this severity was nearly always just, and never passionate, it pained me without making me insubordinate. Failure to please grieved me more than punishment, and signs of dissatisfaction hurt me more than corporal chastisement. It is somewhat embarrassing to explain myself more clearly, but, nevertheless, I must do so. How differently would one deal with youth, if one could more clearly see the remote effects of the usual method of treatment, which is employed always without discrimination, frequently without discretion! The important lesson which may be drawn from an example as common as it is fatal makes me decide to mention it. As Mademoiselle Lambercier had the affection of a mother for us, she also exer-

cised the authority of one, and sometimes carried it so far as to inflict upon us the punishment of children when we had deserved it. For some time she was content with threats, and this threat of a punishment that was quite new to me appeared very terrible; but, after it had been carried out, I found the reality less terrible than the expectation; and, what was still more strange, this chastisement made me still more

devoted to her who had inflicted it. It needed all the strength of this devotion and all my natural docility to keep myself from doing something which would have deservedly brought upon me a repetition of it; for I had found in the pain, even in the disgrace, a mixture of sensuality which had left me less afraid than desirous of experiencing it again from the same hand. No doubt some precocious sexual instinct was mingled with this feeling, for the same chastisement inflicted by her brother

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would not have seemed to me at all pleasant. But, considering his disposition, there was little cause to fear the substitution; and if I kept myself from deserving punishment, it was solely for fear of displeasing Mademoiselle Lambercier; for, so great 1s the power exercised over me by kindness, even by that which is due to the senses, that it has always controlled the latter in my heart. The repetition of the offence, which I avoided without being afraid of it, occurred without any fault of mine, that is to say, of my will, and I may say that I profited by it without any qualm of conscience. But this second time was also the last; for Mademoiselle Lambercier, who had no doubt noticed something which convinced her that the punishment did not have the desired effect, declared that it tired her too much, and that she would abandon it. Until then we had slept in her

room, sometimes even in her bed during the winter. Two days afterwards we were put to sleep in another room, and from that time I had the honour, which I would gladly have dispensed with, of being treated by her as a big boy. Who would believe that this childish punishment, inflicted upon me when only eight years old by a young woman of thirty, disposed of my tastes, my desires, my passions, and my own self for the remainder of my life, and that in a manner exactly contrary to that which should have been the natural result? When my feelings were once inflamed, my desires so went astray that, limited to what I had already felt, they did not trouble themselves to look for anything else. In spite of my hot blood, which has been inflamed with sensuality almost from my birth, I kept myself free from every taint until the age when the coldest and most sluggish temperaments begin to develop. In torments for a long time, without knowing why, I devoured with burning glances all the pretty women I met; my imagination unceasingly recalled them to me, only to make use of them in my own fashion, and to make of them so many Mlles. Lambercier. Even after I had reached years of maturity, this curious taste, always abiding with me and carried to depravity and even frenzy, preserved my morality, which it might naturally have been expected to destroy. If ever a bringing-up was chaste and modest, assuredly mine was. My three aunts were not only models of propriety, but reserved to a degree which has long since been unknown amongst women. My father, a man of pleasure, but a gallant of the old school, never said a word, even in the presence of women whom he loved more than others, which would have

brought a blush to a maiden’s cheek; and the respect due to children has never been so much insisted upon as in my family and in my presence. In this respect I found M. Lambercier equally careful; and an excellent servant was dismissed for having used a somewhat too free expression in our presence. Until I was a young man, I not only had no distinct idea of the union of the sexes, but the confused notion which

I had regarding it never presented itself to me except in a hateful and disgusting form. For common prostitutes I felt a loathing which has never been effaced: the sight of a profligate always filled me with contempt, even with affright. My horror of debauchery became thus pronounced ever since the day when, walking to Little Sacconex’ by a hollow way, I saw on both sides holes in the ground, where I was told

* Little Sacconex: A village near Geneva.

Confessions

that these creatures carried on their intercourse. The though t of the one always brought back to my mind the copulation of dogs, and the bare recollection was sufficient to disgust me. This tendency of my bringing-up, in itself adapted to delay the first outbreaks of an inflammable temperament, was assisted, as I have already said, by the direction which the first indications of sensuality took in my case. Only busying my imagination with what I had actually felt, in spite of most uncomfortable efferve scence of blood, I only knew how to turn my desires in the direction of that kind of pleasure with which I was acquainted, without ever going as far as that which had been made hateful to me, and which, without my having the least suspicion of it, was so closely related to the other. In my foolish fancies, in my erotic frenzies, in the extrava gant acts to which they sometimes led me, I had recourse in my imagination to the assistance of the other sex, without ever thinking that it was serviceable for any purpose than that for which I was burning to make use ofit. In this manner, then, in spite of an ardent, lascivious, and precocious temperament, I passed the age of puberty without desiring, even without knowing of any other sensual pleasures than those of which Mademoiselle Lambercier had most innocently given me the idea; and when, in course of time, I became a man, that which should

have destroyed me again preserved me. My old childish taste, instead of disappearing, became so associated with the other, that I could never banish it from the desires kindled by my senses; and this madness, joined to my natural shyness, has always made me very unenterprising with women, for want of courage to say all or power to do all. The kind of enjoyment, of which the other was only for me the final consummation, could neither be appropriated by him who longed for it, nor guessed by her who was able to bestow it. Thus I have spent my life in idle longing, without saying a word, in the presence of those whom I loved most. Too bashful to declare my taste, I at least satisfied it in situations which had reference to it and kept up the idea of it. To lie at the feet of an imperious mistress, to obey her commands, to ask her forgiveness— this was for me a sweet enjoyment; and, the more my lively imagination heated my blood, the more I presented the appearance of a bashful lover. It may be easily imagined that this manner of making love does not lead to very speedy results, and is not very dangerous to the virtue of those who are its object. For this reason I have rarely possessed, but have none the less enjoyed myself in my own way—that is to say, in imagination. Thus it has happened that my senses, in harmony with my timid disposition and my romantic spirit, have kept my sentiments pure and my morals blameless, owing to the very tastes which, combined with a little more impudence,

might have plunged me into the most brutal sensuality. I have taken the first and most difficult step in the dark and dirty labyrinth of my confessions. It is easier to admit that which is criminal than that which is ridiculous and makes a man feel ashamed. Henceforth I am sure of myself; after having ventured to say so much, I can shrink from nothing. One may judge what such confessions have cost me, from the fact that, during the whole course of my life, I have never dared to declare my folly to those whom I loved with the frenzy of a passion which deprived me of sight and hearing, which robbed me of my senses and caused me to tremble all over with a convulsive movement. I have never brought myself,

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even when on most intimate terms, to ask women to grant me the only favour of all which was wanting. This never happened to me but once—in my childhood, with a girl of my own age; even then, it was she who first proposed it. While thus going back to the first traces of my inner life, I find elements which sometimes appear incompatible, and yet have united in order to produce with vigour a simple and uniform effect; and I find others which, although apparently the same, have formed combinations so different, owing to the co-operation of certain circumstances, that one would never imagine that these elements were in any way connected. Who, for instance, would believe that one of the most powerful move-

ments of my soul was tempered in the same spring from which a stream of sensuality and effeminacy has entered my blood? Without leaving the subject of which I have just spoken, I shall produce by means of it a very different impression. One dayIwas learning my lesson by myself in the room next to the kitchen. The servant had put Mademoiselle Lambercier’s combs in front of the fire-place to dry. When she came back to fetch them, she found one with a whole row of teeth broken. Who was to blame for the damage? No one except myself had entered the room. On being questioned, I denied that I had touched the comb. M. and Mademoiselle Lambercier both began to admonish, to press, and to threaten me; I obstinately persisted in my denial; but the evidence was too strong, and outweighed all my protestations, although it was the first time that I had been found to lie so boldly. The matter was regarded as serious, as in fact it deserved to be. The mischievousness, the falsehood, the obstinacy appeared equally deserving of punishment; but this time it was not by Mademoiselle Lambercier that chastisement was inflicted. My uncle Bernard was written to, and he came. My poor cousin was accused of another equally grave offence; we were involved in the same punishment. It was terrible. Had they wished to look for the remedy in the evil itself and to deaden for ever my depraved senses, they could not have set to work better, and for a long time my senses left me undisturbed. They could not draw from me the desired confession. Although I was several times brought up before them and reduced to a pitiable condition, I remained unshaken. I would have endured death, and made up my mind to do so. Force was obliged to yield to the diabolical obstinacy of a child—as they called my firmness. At last I emerged from this cruel trial, utterly broken, but triumphant. It is now nearly fifty years since this incident took place, and I have no fear of being punished again for the same thing. Well, then, I declare in the sight of heaven that I was innocent of the offence, that I neither broke nor touched the comb, that

I never went near the fire-place, and had never even thought of doing so. It would be useless to ask me how the damage was done: I do not know, and I cannot understand; all that I know for certain is, that I had nothing to do with it.

Imagine a child, shy and obedient in ordinary life, but fiery, proud, and unruly in his passions: a child who had always been led by the voice of reason and always treated with gentleness, justice, and consideration, who had not even a notion of

injustice, and who for the first time becomes acquainted with so terrible an example of it on the part of the very people whom he most loves and respects! What an upset of ideas! what a disturbance of feelings! what revolution in his heart, in his brain, in

the whole of his little intellectual and moral being! Imagine all this, I say, if possible.

Confessions

As for myself, I feel incapable of disentangling and following up the least trace of what then took place within me. I had not yet sense enough to feel how much appearances were against me, and to put myself in the place of the others. I kept to my own place, and all that I felt was the harshness of a frightful punishment for an offence which I had not committed. The bodily pain, although severe, I felt but little: all I felt was indignation, rage, despair. My cousin, whose case was almost the same, and who had been punished for an involuntary mistake as if it had been a premeditated act, following my example, flew into a rage, and worked himself up to the same pitch of excitement as myself. Both in the same bed, we embraced each other with convulsive transports: we felt suffocated; and when at length our young hearts, somewhat relieved, were able to

vent their wrath, we sat upright in bed and began to shout, times without number, with all our might: Carnifex! carnifex! carnifex!” While I write these words, I feel that my pulse beats faster; those moments will always be present to me though | should live a hundred thousand years. That first feeling of violence and injustice has remained so deeply graven on my soul, that all the ideas connected with it bring back to me my first emotion; and this feeling, which, in its origin, had reference only to myself, has become so strong in itself and so completely detached from all personal interest, that, when I see or hear of any act my heart — whoever is the victim of it, and wherever it is committed— of injustice Iread of the cruelkindles with rage, as if the effect of it recoiled upon myself. When ties of a ferocious tyrant, the crafty atrocities of a rascally priest, Iwould gladly set out to plunge a dagger into the heart of such wretches, although I had to die for it a_ hundred times. I have often put myself in a perspiration, pursuing or stoning a cock, a cow, a dog, or any animal which I saw tormenting another merely because itfelt

itself the stronger. This impulse may be natural to me, and I believe that it is; but the profound impression left upon me by the first injustice I suffered was too long and

it. itoostrongly connected with it, not to have greatly strengthened

that With the above incident the tranquillity of my childish life was over. From the that feel I moment I ceased to enjoy a pure happiness, and even at the present day months few a recollection of the charms of my childhood ceases there. We remained us—still in the longer at Bossey. We were there, as the first man is represented to n was the earthly paradise, but we no longer enjoyed it; in appearance our conditio intirespect, nt, same, in reality it was quite a different manner of existence. Attachme regarded longer we no macy, and confidence no longer united pupils and guides: less ashamed of doing became we hearts; our in read to able were them as gods, who e, to be insubordinate, wrong and more afraid of being accused; we began to dissembl threw a veil of ugliness to lie. All the vices of our age corrupted our innocence and charm of gentleness and over our amusements. Even the country lost in our eyes that and sombre: it seemed as simplicity which goes to the heart. It appeared to us lonely from our eyes. We ceased to it were covered with a veil which concealed its beauties no longer scratched up the cultivate our little gardens, our plants, our flowers. We

° Carnifex: Executioner or torturer (Latin).

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ground gently, or cried with joy when we saw the seed which we had sown beginning to sprout. We were disgusted with the life, and others were disgusted with us; my uncle took us away, and we separated from M. and Mademoiselle Lambercier, having had enough of each other, and feeling but little regret at the separation. Nearly thirty years have passed since I left Bossey, without my recalling to mind my stay there with any connected and pleasurable recollections; but, now that I have passed the prime of life and am approaching old age, I feel these same recollections springing up again while others disappear; they stamp themselves upon my memory with features, the charm and strength of which increase daily, as if, feeling life already slipping away, I were endeavouring to grasp it again by its commencement. The most trifling incidents of that time please me, simply because they belong to that period. I remember all the details of place, persons, and time. I see the maid or the manser-

vant busy in the room, a swallow darting through the window, a fly settling on my hand while I was saying my lesson: I see the whole arrangement of the room in which we used to live; M. Lambercier’s study on the right, a copperplate engraving of all the Popes, a barometer, a large almanack hanging on the wall, the raspberry bushes which, growing in a garden situated on very high ground facing the back of the house, shaded the window and sometimes forced their way through it. I am quite aware that the reader does not want to know all this; but Iam bound to tell him. Why have I not the courage to relate to him in like manner all the trifling anecdotes of that happy time, which still make me tremble with joy when I recall them? Five or six in particular — but let us make a bargain. I will let you off five, but I wish to tell you one, only one, provided that you will permit me to tell it in as much detail as possible, in order to prolong my enjoyment. If I only had your pleasure in view, I might choose the story of Mademoiselle Lambercier’s backside, which, owing to an unfortunate somersault at the bottom of the meadow, was exhibited in full view to the King of Sardinia, who happened to be passing by; but that of the walnut-tree on the terrace is more amusing for me who took an active part in it, whereas I was merely a spectator of the somersault; besides,

I declare that I found absolutely nothing to laugh at in an accident which, although comic in itself, alarmed me for the safety of a person whom I loved as a mother and,

perhaps, even more. Now, O curious readers of the important history of the walnut-tree on the terrace, listen to the horrible tragedy, and keep from shuddering if you can! Outside the gate of the court, on the left of the entrance, there was a terrace, where we often went to sit in the afternoon. As it was entirely unprotected from the sun, M. Lambercier had a walnut-tree planted there: The process of planting was carried out with the greatest solemnity. The two boarders were its godfathers; and, while the hole was being filled up, we each of us held the tree with one hand and sang

songs of triumph. In order to water it, a kind of basin was made round the foot. Every day, eager spectators of this watering, my cousin and I became more strongly convinced, as was natural, that it was a finer thing to plant a tree on a terrace than a

flag upon a breach, and we resolved to win this glory for ourselves without sharing it with anyone.

Confessions

With this object, we proceeded to cut a slip from a young willow, and planted it on the terrace, at a distance of about eight or ten feet from the august walnut-tree. We did not forget to dig a similar trench round our tree; the difficulty was how to fill it, for the water came from some distance, and we were not allowed to run and fetch

it. However, it was absolutely necessary to have some for our willow. For a few days, we had recourse to all kinds of devices to get some, and we succeeded so well that we saw it bud and put forth little leaves, the growth of which we measured every hour, convinced that, although not yet a foot high, it would soon afford us a shade. As our tree so completely claimed our attention that we were quite incapable of attending to or learning anything else, and were in a sort of delirium: as our guardians, not knowing what was the matter with us, kept a tighter hand upon us, we saw the fatal moment approaching when we should be without water, and were inconsolable at the thought of seeing our tree perish from drought. At length necessity, the mother of invention, suggested to us how to save ourselves from grief and the tree from certain death; this was, to make a channel underground, which should secretly conduct part of the water intended for the walnut-tree to our willow. This undertaking was at first unsuccessful, in spite of the eagerness with which it was carried out. We had made the incline so clumsily that the water did not run at all. The earth fell in and stopped up the channel; the entrance was filled with mud; everything went wrong. But nothing disheartened us: Labor omnia vincit improbus.'” We dug our basin deeper, in order to allow the water to run; we cut some bottoms of boxes into small narrow planks, some of which were laid flat, one after the other, and

others set up on both sides of these at an angle, thus forming a triangular canal for our conduit. At the entrance we stuck small pieces of wood, some little distance apart, which, forming a kind of grating or lattice-work, kept back the mud and stones, without stopping the passage of the water. We carefully covered our work with welltrodden earth; and when all was ready, we awaited, in the greatest excitement of hope and fear, the time of watering. After centuries of waiting, the hour at length arrived; M. Lambercier came as usual to assist at the operation, during which we both kept behind him, in order to conceal our tree, to which very luckily he turned his back. it runNo sooner had the first pail of water been poured out, than we saw some of of cries utter to ning into our basin. At this sight, our prudence deserted us: we began in delight great joy which made M. Lambercier turn round; this was a pity, for he took the absorbed it seeing how good the soil of the walnut-tree was, and how greedily he cried out in his turn, water. Astonished at seeing it distribute itself into two basins,

one blow, broke looked, perceived the trick, ordered a pickaxe to be brought, and, with , an aqueaqueduct off two or three pieces from our planks; then, crying loudly, “An to our straight went duct!” he dealt merciless blows in every direction, each of which and d destroye was ng hearts. In a moment planks, conduit, basin, willow, everythi of work terrible this uprooted, without his having uttered a single word, during he !” aqueduct “An repeated. destruction, except the exclamation which he incessantly !” aqueduct an , aqueduct “an ng, everythi cried, while demolishing difficulties.” (Virgil, Georgics I) 101 abor. . .improbus: “Tenacious work overcomes all

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It will naturally be imagined that the adventure turned out badly for the little architects: that would be a mistake: it was all over. M. Lambercier never uttered a single word of reproach, or looked upon us with displeasure, and said nothing more about it; shortly afterwards, we even heard him laughing loudly with his sister, for his laughter could be heard a long way off; and what was still more astonishing, when the first fright was over, we ourselves were not much troubled about the mat-

ter. We planted another tree somewhere else, and often reminded ourselves of the disaster that overtook the first, by repeating with emphasis, “An aqueduct, an aqueduct!” Hitherto I had had intermittent attacks of pride, when I was Aristides or Brutus; then it was that I felt the first well-defined promptings of vanity. To have been able to construct an aqueduct with our own hands, to have put a cutting in competition with a large tree, appeared to me the height of glory. At ten years of age I was a better judge on this point than Cesar at thirty. The thought of this walnut-tree and the little history connected with it has remained so vivid in my memory, or returned to it, that one of the plans which gave

me the greatest pleasure, on my journey to Geneva, in 1754, was to go to Bossey and revisit the memorials of my boyish amusements, above all, the dear walnut-tree, which by that time must have been a third of a century old; but I was so continually occupied, so little my own master, that I could never find the moment to afford myself this satisfaction. There is little prospect of the opportunity ever occurring again; yet the wish has not disappeared with the hope; and I am almost certain that, if ever I should return to those beloved spots and find my dear walnut-tree still alive, I should water it with my tears. After my return to Geneva, | lived for two or three years'' with my uncle, waiting until my friends had decided what was to be done with me. As he intended his own son to be an engineer, he made him learn a little drawing and taught him the elements of Euclid.’ I learned these subjects together with him, and acquired a taste for them, especially for drawing. In the meantime, it was debated whether I should be a watchmaker, an attorney, or a minister. My own preference was for the last, for preaching seemed to me to be a very fine thing; but the small income from my mother’s property, which had to be divided between my brother and myself, was not sufficient to allow me to prosecute my studies. As, considering my age at that time, there was no immediate need to decide, I remained for the present with my uncle, making little use of my time and, in addition, as was only fair, paying a tolerably large sum for my board. My uncle, a man of pleasure like my father, was unable, like him, to tie himself down to his duties, and troubled himself little enough about us.

My aunt was somewhat of a pietist, and preferred to sing psalms rather than attend to our education. We were allowed almost absolute freedom, which we never abused. Always inseparable, we were quite contented with our own society; and, having no temptation to make companions of the street boys of our own age, we learned

"two. . . years: Rousseau actually lived with his uncle for less than a year; this is only one of the many details in the autobiography that is inaccurate.

” Euclid: Third-century Greek mathematician, whose Elements established many of the principles of geometry.

Confessions

none of the dissolute habits into which idleness might have led us. I am in saying that we were idle, for we were never less so in our lives; and the nate thing was, that all the ways of amusing ourselves, with which we became infatuated, kept us together busy in the house, without our

even wrong most fortusuccessively being even

tempted to go out into the street. We made cages, flutes, shuttlecocks, drums, houses,

squirts, and cross-bows. We spoilt my good old grandfather’s tools in trying to make watches as he did. We had a special taste for wasting paper, drawing, painting in water-colours, illuminating, and spoiling colours. An Italian showman, named Gamba-Corta, came to Geneva; we went to see him once and never wanted to go

again. But he had a marionette-show, and we proceeded to make marionettes; his marionettes played comedies and we composed comedies for ours. For want of a squeaker, we imitated Punch’s voice in our throat, in order to play the charming comedies, which our poor and kind relations had the patience to sit and listen to. But, my uncle Bernard having one day read aloud in the family circle a very fine sermon which he had composed himself, we abandoned comedy and began to write sermons. These details are not very interesting, I confess, but they show how exceedingly well-conducted our early education must have been, seeing that we, almost masters of our time and ourselves at so tender an age, were so little tempted to abuse our opportunities. We had so little need of making companions, that we even neglected the chances of doing so. When we went for a walk, we looked at their amusements as we passed by without the slightest desire, or even the idea of taking part in them. Our friendship so completely filled our hearts, that it was enough for us to be together to make the simplest amusements a delight. Being thus inseparable, we began to attract attention: the more so as, my cousin being very tall while I was very short, we made an oddly-assorted couple. His long, slim figure, his little face like a boiled apple, his gentle manner, and his slovenly walk excited the children’s ridicule. In the patois of the district he was nicknamed Barna Bredanna," and, directly we went out, we heard nothing but “Barna Bredanna!” all round us. He endured it more quietly than I did: I lost my temper and wanted to fight. This was just what the little rascals desired. I fought and was beaten. My poor

of the fist cousin helped me as well as he could; but he was weak, and a single blow

blows in knocked him down. Then I became furious. However, although I received but my obstinate abundance, I was not the real object of attack, but Barna Bredanna;

go out duranger made matters so much worse, that, in future, we only ventured to ing school-hours, for fear of being hooted and followed. Paladin” Behold me already a redresser of wrongs! In order to be a regular Nyon, a at father my I only wanted a lady; I had two. From time to time I went to see He was very much liked, and little town in the Vaud country, where he had settled.

time I stayed with him, his son felt the effects of his popularity. During the short

A certain Madame de Vulson, friends vied with each other in making me welcome. and, to crown all, her daughter especially, bestowed a thousand caresses upon me,

3 Barna Bredanna: A “bridled donkey.” of Roland. 14 paladin: A chivalric hero from the twelfth-century Song

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took me for her lover. It is easy to understand the meaning ofa lover eleven year fora girl of twenty-two. But all these roguish young women are sosant to vitlittle puppets in front in order to hide larger ones, or to tempt them with the idea of an amusement which they know how to render attractive! As for myself, I saw no incongruity between us and took the matter seriously; | abandoned myself with all my heart, or rather with all my head — for it was only in that part of me that I was in love, although madly —and my transports, excitement, and frenzy produced scenes enough to make anyone split his sides with laughing. I am acquainted with two very distinct and very real kinds of love, which have scarcely anything in common, although both are very fervent, and which both differ from tender friendship. The whole course of my life has been divided between these two kinds of love, essentially so different, and I have even felt them both at the same time; for instance, at the time of which I am speaking, while I took possession of

Mademoiselle de Vulson so openly and so tyrannically that I could not endure that any man should approach her, I had several meetings, brief but lively, with a certain little Mademoiselle Goton, in which she deigned to play the schoolmistress, and that was all; but this all, which was really all for me, seemed to me the height of happiness; and, already feeling the value of the mystery, although I only knew how to make use of it as a child, I paid Mademoiselle de Vulson, who had scarcely any suspicion of it, in

the same coin, for the assiduity with which she made use of me to conceal other amours. But, to my great regret, my secret was discovered, or not so well kept on the part of my little schoolmistress as on my own; we were soon separated; and, some time afterwards, on my return to Geneva, while passing through Coutance, I heard

some little girls cry, in an undertone, “Goton tic-tac Rousseau!”"” This little Mademoiselle Goton was really a singular person. Without being pretty, she had a face which was not easy to forget, and which I still recall to mind, often too tenderly for an old fool. Neither her form, nor her manner, nor, above all,

her eyes were in keeping with her age. She had a proud and commanding air, which suited her part admirably, and which in fact had suggested the first idea of it to us. But the oddest thing about her was a mixture of impudence and reserve which it was difficult to comprehend. She took the greatest liberties with me, but never allowed me to take any with her. She treated me just like a child, which makes me believe, either that she was no longer one herself, or that, on the contrary, she was

still childish enough to see nothing but an amusement in the danger to which she exposed herself. I belonged entirely, so to say, to each of these two persons, and so completely, that, when I was with one, I never thought of the other. In other respects, there was

not the slightest similarity between the feelings with which they inspired me. I could have spent all my life with Mademoiselle de Vulson, without ever thinking of leaving her; but, when I approached her, my joy was tranquil and free from emotion. I loved her above all in fashionable society; the witty sallies, railleries, and even the petty

' Coutance: A district in Geneva where Rousseau’s family lived after 1718; tic-tac: Goton is in love with, or comes to blows with, Rousseau.

Confessions

jealousies attracted and interested me; I felt a pride and glory in the marks of preference she bestowed upon me in the presence of grown-up rivals whom she appeared to treat with disdain. I was tormented, but I loved the torment. The applause, encouragement, and laughter warmed and inspirited me. I had fits of passion and broke out into audacious sallies. In society, I was transported with love; in a téte-atéte I should have been constrained, cold, perhaps wearied. However, I felt a real tenderness for her; I suffered when she was ill; | would have given my own health to restore her own, and, observe! I knew very well from experience the meaning of illness and health. When absent from her, I thought of her and missed her; when I was

by her side, her caresses reached my heart—not my senses. I was intimate with her with impunity; my imagination demanded no more than she granted; yet I could not have endured to see her do even as much for others. I loved her as a brother, but I was as jealous of her as a lover. I should have been as jealous of Mademoiselle Goton as a Turk, a madman, or a tiger, if I had once imagined that she could accord the same treatment to another as to myself; for even that was a favour which I had to ask on my knees. I approached Mademoiselle de Vulson with lively pleasure, but without emotion; whereas, if 1 only With saw Mademoiselle Goton, I saw nothing else, all my senses were bewildered.

the former I was familiar without familiarity; while on the contrary, in the presence of the latter, I was as bashful as I was excited, even in the midst of our greatest famil:arities. I believe that, if Ihad remained with her long, I should have died; the throbbings of my heart would have suffocated me. I was equally afraid of displeasing Nothing either; but I was more attentive to the one and more obedient to the other. Mademoiif ‘nthe world would have made me annoy Mademoiselle de Vulson; but I should have selle Goton had ordered me to throw myself into the flames, I believe obeyed her immediately.

ed only for a short My amour, or rather my meetings, with the latter, continu

iselle de Vulson time— happily for both of us. Although my relations with Mademo ophe, after they had had not the same danger, they were not without their catastr always be somewhat lasted a little longer. The end of all such connections should Although my connecromantic, and furnish occasion for exclamations of sorrow. closer. We never seption with Mademoiselle de Vulson was less lively, it was perhaps

what an overwhelming void I felt arated without tears, and it is remarkable into

and think of nothing but her; myself plunged as soon as | had left her. I could speak at bottom, this heroic regret was my regret was genuine and lively; but I believe that, ing it, the amusements, of not felt altogether for her, and that, without my perceiv moderate the pangs of absence, which she was the centre, played their part in it. To to melt the heart of a stone. At last I we wrote letters to each other, pathetic enough came to Geneva to see me. This time triumphed; she could endure it no longer, and and mad during the two days she my head was completely turned; I was drunk myself in the water after her, and the air remained. When she left I wanted to throw bonbons and

rds she sent me some resounded with my screams. Eight days afterwa compliment, if Ihad not learnt at the gloves, which I should have considered a great the visit with which she had been pleased same time that she was married, and that buy her wedding-dress. I will not attempt to honour me was really made in order to

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to describe my fury; it may be imagined. In my noble rage I swore that I would never see the faithless one again, being unable to imagine a more terrible punishment for her. She did not, however, die of it; for, twenty years afterwards, when on a visit to my father, while rowing with him on the lake, I asked who the ladies were whom I saw in a boat not far from ours. “What!” said my father with a smile, “does not your heart

tell you? it is your old love, Mademoiselle de Vulson that was, now Madame Cristin.” I started

at the USS eponlircos name, but I told the boatmen to change wee

[1723-1728] Thus the most valuable time of my boyhood was wasted in follies, before my future career had been decided upon. After long deliberation as to the bent of my natural inclination, a profession was determined upon for which I had the least taste; I was

put with M. Masseron, the town clerk, in order to learn, under his tuition, the useful trade of a fee-grabber.'° This nickname was extremely distasteful to me; the hope of gaining a number of crowns in a somewhat sordid business by no means flattered my pride; the occupation itself appeared to me wearisome and unendurable; the constant application, the feeling of servitude completed my dislike, and I never entered the office without a feeling of horror, which daily increased in intensity. M. Masseron, on his part, was ill-satisfied with me, and treated me with contempt; he continually reproached me with my dullness and stupidity, dinning into my ears every day that my uncle had told him that I knew something, whereas, in reality, 1 knew nothing; that he had promised him a sharp lad, and had given him a jackass. At last I was dismissed from the office in disgrace as being utterly incapable, and M. Masseron’s clerks declared that I was good for nothing except to handle a file. My calling being thus settled, I was apprenticed, not, however, to a watchmaker, but to an engraver. The contempt with which I had been treated by M. Masseron had made me very humble, and I obeyed without a murmur. My new master, M. Ducommun, was a rough and violent young man, who in a short time succeeded in tarnishing all the brightness of my childhood, stupefying my loving and lively nature, and reducing me, in mind as well as in position, to a real state of apprenticeship. My Latin, my antiquities, my history, were all for a long time forgotten; I did not even remember that there had ever been any Romans in the world. My father, when I went to see him, no longer found in me his idol; for the ladies I was no longer the gallant Jean Jacques; and I felt so certain myself that the Lamberciers would not have recognised their pupil in me, that I was ashamed to pay them a visit, and have never seen them since. The vilest tastes, the lowest street-blackguardism took the

place of my simple amusements and effaced even the remembrance of them. I must, in spite of a most upright training, have had a great propensity to degenerate; for the

1° fee-grabber: A lawyer.

Confessions

change took place with great rapidity, without the least trouble, and never did so

precocious a Cesar so rapidly become a Laridon.”” The trade in itself was not disagreeable to me; I had a decided taste for drawing; the handling of a graving-tool amused me; and as the claims upon the skill of a watchmaker’s engraver were limited, I hoped to attain perfection. I should, perhaps, have done so, had not my master’s brutality and excessive restraint disgusted me with my work. I stole some of my working hours to devote to similar occupations, but which had for me the charm of freedom. I engraved medals for an order of knighthood for myself and my companions. My master surprised me at this contraband occupation, and gave me a sound thrashing, declaring that I was training for a coiner, because our medals bore the arms of the Republic. I can swear that I had no

idea at all of bad, and only a very faint one of good, money. I knew better how the Roman As‘* was made than our three-sou pieces. My master’s tyranny at length made the work, of which I should have been very fond, altogether unbearable, and filled me with vices which I should otherwise have

hated, such as lying, idleness, and thieving. The recollection of the alteration pro-

duced in me by that period of my life has taught me, better than anything else, the difference between filial dependence and abject servitude. Naturally shy and timid, no fault was more foreign to my disposition than impudence; but I had enjoyed an honourable liberty, which hitherto had only been gradually restrained, and at length disappeared altogether. I was bold with my father, unrestrained with M. Lambercier, moment and modest with my uncle; I became timid with my master, and from that

r was a lost child. Accustomed to perfect equality in my intercourse with my superiors, knowing no pleasure which was not within my reach, seeing no dish of which , I could not have a share, having no desire which I could not have openly expressed become, to and carrying my heart upon my lips—it is easy to judge what I was bound to leave ina house in which I did not venture to open my mouth, where I was obliged more nothing the table before the meal was half over, and the room as soon as I had

of enjoyment to do there; where, incessantly fettered to my work, I saw only objects by my enjoyed for others and of privation for myself; where the sight of the liberty disputes in where, ; master and companions increased the weight of my servitude to open my mouth; venture not did I , informed best was I which to about matters as an object of longing, simwhere, in short, everything that I saw became for my heart of manner, my gaiety, the ply because I was deprived of all. From that time my ease done something wrong, had happy expressions which, in former times, when I had gone. I cannot help laughing gained me immunity from punishment—all were house, having been sent to bed when I remember how, one evening, at my father’s through the kitchen with my without any supper for some piece of roguery, I passed turning on the spit, sniffed at it. All melancholy piece of bread, and, seeing the joint and, in passing, I was obliged to say the household was standing round the hearth, round, I winked at the joint, which good-night to everybody. When I had gone the e’s Fables (1668 f.). 7 Laridon: A degenerate dog, from La Fontain

1845: A Roman unit of monetary measure.

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looked so nice and smelt so good, and could not help bowing to it as well, and saying ina mournful voice, “Good-night, roast beef!” This naive sally amused them so much that they made me stop to supper. Perhaps it might have had the same effect with my master, but I am sure that it would never have occurred to me, and that I should not

have had the courage, to say it in his presence. In this manner I learnt to covet in silence, to dissemble, to lie, and, lastly, to steal— an idea which, up to that time, had never even entered my mind, and of which since

then I have never been able to cure myself completely. Covetousness and weakness always lead in that direction. This explains why all servants are rogues, and why all apprentices ought to be; but the latter, in a peaceful state of equality, where all that they see is within their reach, lose, as they grow up, this disgraceful propensity. Not having had the same advantages, I have not been able to reap the same benefits. It is nearly always good, but badly-directed principles, that make a child take the first step towards evil. In spite of continual privations and temptations, I had been more than a year with my master without being able to make up my mind to take anything, even eatables. My first theft was a matter of obliging some one else, but it opened the door to others, the motive of which was not so praiseworthy. My master had a journeyman, named M. Verrat, whose house was in the neighbourhood, and had a garden some way off which produced very fine asparagus. M. Verrat, who was not too well supplied with money, conceived the idea of stealing some of his mother’s young asparagus and selling it in order to provide himself with two or three good breakfasts. As he was unwilling to run the risk himself, and was not very active, he selected me for the expedition. After some preliminary cajoleries, which the more easily succeeded with me as I did not see their as he aera it to ) eee

wposeC et eee

It:

cheaper. int my fasta I ook uigteece she chose to pifex, me, au be it tospotted The amount was immediately converted into a breakfast, of which I was the purveyor, and which he shared with another companion; I myself was quite satisfied with a few scraps, and never even touched their wine. This little arrangement continued several days, without its even occurring to me to rob the robber, and to levy my tithe of the proceeds of M. Verrat’s asparagus. I performed my part in the transaction with the greatest loyalty; my only motive was to please him who prompted me to carry it out. And yet, if I had been caught, what blows, abuse, and cruel treatment should I have had to endure, while the wretch,

who would have been sure to give me the lie, would have been believed on his word, and I should have suffered double punishment for having had the impudence to accuse him, seeing that he was a journeyman, while I was only an apprentice! So true it is that, in every condition of life, the strong man who is guilty saves himself at the expense of the innocent who is weak. In this manner I learned that stealing was not so terrible a thing as I had imagined, and I soon knew how to make such good use of my discovery, that nothing I desired, if it was within my reach, was safe from me. I was not absolutely ill-fed, and

Confessions

abstinence was only rendered difficult to me from seeing that my master observed it so ill himself. The custom of sending young people from the table when the most appetising dishes are brought on appears to me admirably adapted to make them gluttons as well as thieves. In a short time I became both the one and the other; and,

as a rule, I came off very well; occasionally, when I was caught, very badly. I shudder, and at the same time laugh, when I remember an apple-hunt which cost me dear. These apples were at the bottom of a store-room, which was lighted from the kitchen by means of ahigh grating. One day, when I was alone in the house, I climbed upon the kneading-trough, in order to look at the precious fruit in the garden of the Hesperides,” which was out of my reach. | went to fetch the spit to see if Icould touch the apples; it was too short. To make it longer, I tied on to it another little spit which was used for small game, for my master was very fond of sport. I thrust several times without success; at last, to my great delight, I felt that I had secured an apple. I pulled very gently; the apple was close to the grating; I was ready to catch hold of it. But who can describe my grief, when I found that it was too large to pass through the bars? How many expedients I tried, to get it through! I had to find supports to keep the spit in its place, a knife long enough to divide the apple, a lath to hold it up. At last I managed to divide it, and hoped to be able to pull the pieces towards me one after the other; but no sooner were they separated than they both fell into the store-room. Compassionate reader, share my affliction! of I by no means lost courage; but I had lost considerable time. I was afraid to returned and day, g followin the till being surprised. I put off a more lucky attempt two tell-tale my work as quietly as if I had done nothing, without thinking of the witnesses in the store-room. attempt. The next day, finding the opportunity favourable, I made a fresh make a to ready was and it, d adjuste I climbed upon my stool, lengthened the spit, of the door the once at all asleep; not lunge .. . but, unfortunately, the dragon was said, and me, at looked arms, his folded store-room opened, my master came out, “Courage!” . . . the pen falls from my hand.

became less sensitive to it, In consequence of continuous ill-treatment I soon

gave me the right to conand regarded it as a kind of compensation for theft, which punishment, I looked the ring conside tinue the latter. Instead of looking back and was forward and thought of revenge.

I considered that, if Iwere beaten as a rogue, I

a flogging went together, and entitled to behave like one. I found that stealing and part, I could safely leave my my med constituted a sort of bargain, and that, if I perfor more quietly than before. steal to began master to carry out his own. With this idea, I Never mind; I am made . flogged be I said to myself: “What will be the result? I shall to be flogged.” l, but not a gourmand; too lam fond of eating, but am not greedy; | am sensua f about my food except mysel led many other tastes prevent that. I have never troub m been the case during seldo so has when my heart has been unoccupied: and that about dainties. For this reason I did my life that I have scarcely had time to think . nymphs who guarded a tree of golden apples '? Hesperides: In Greek mythology, the

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not long confine my thievish propensities to eatables, but soon extended them to everything which tempted me; and, ifIdid not become a regular thief, it was because I have never been much tempted by money. Leading out of the common workshop was a private room belonging to my master, the door of which I found means to open and shut without being noticed. There I laid under contribution his best tools, drawings, proofs—in fact, everything which attracted me and which he purposely kept out of my reach. At bottom, these thefts were quite innocent, being only committed to serve him; but I was transported with joy at having these trifles in my power; I thought that I was robbing him of his talent together with its productions. Besides, I found boxes containing gold and silver filings, little trinkets, valuables, and

coins. When I had four or five sous in my pocket, I thought I was rich; and yet, far from touching anything of what I found there, I do not even remember that I ever cast longing eyes upon it. I looked upon it with more affright than pleasure. I believe that this horror of stealing money and valuables was in great part the result of my bringing-up. With it were combined secret thoughts of disgrace, prison, punishment, and the gallows, which would have made me shudder if I had been tempted;

whereas my tricks only appeared to me in the light of pieces of mischief, and in fact were nothing else. They could lead to nothing but a sound flogging from my master, and I prepared myself for that beforehand. But, I repeat, I never felt sufficient longing to need to control myself; I had nothing to contend with. A single sheet of fine drawing-paper tempted me more than money enough to buy a ream of it. This singularity is connected with one of the peculiarities of my character; it has exercised such great influence upon my conduct that it is worth while to explain it. Iam aman of very strong passions, and, while I am stirred by them, nothing can equal my impetuosity; I forget all discretion, all feelings of respect, fear, and decency; I am cynical, impudent, violent, and fearless; no feeling of shame keeps me back, no

danger frightens me; with the exception of the single object which occupies my thoughts, the universe is nothing to me. But all this lasts only for a moment, and the following moment plunges me into complete annihilation. In my calmer moments I am indolence and timidity itself; everything frightens and discourages me; a fly, buzzing past, alarms me; a word which I have to say, a gesture which I have to make,

terrifies my idleness; fear and shame overpower me to such an extent that I would gladly hide myself from the sight of my fellow-creatures. If I have to act, I do not know what to do; if I have to speak, I do not know what to say; if anyone looks at me, I am put out of countenance. When I am strongly moved I sometimes know how to find the right words, but in ordinary conversation I can find absolutely nothing, and my condition is unbearable for the simple reason that I am obliged to speak. Add to this, that none of my prevailing tastes centre in things that can be bought. I want nothing but unadulterated pleasures, and money poisons all. For instance, am fond of the pleasures of the table; but, as I cannot endure either the constraint of good

society or the drunkenness of the tavern, I can only enjoy them with a friend; alone, I cannot do so, for my imagination then occupies itself with other things, and eating affords me no pleasure. If my heated blood longs for women, my excited heart longs still more for affection. Women who could be bought for money would lose for me all

Confessions

their charms; I even doubt whether it would be in me to make use of them. I find it the same with all pleasures within my reach; unless they cost me nothing, I find them insipid. I only love those enjoyments which belong to no one but the first man who knows how to enjoy them. Money has never appeared to me as valuable as it is generally considered. More than that, it has never even appeared to me particularly convenient. It is good for nothing in itself; it has to be changed before it can be enjoyed; one is obliged to buy, to bargain, to be often cheated, to pay dearly, to be badly served. I should like something which is good in quality; with my money I am sure to get it bad. If I pay a high price for a fresh egg, it is stale; for a nice piece of fruit, it is unripe; for a girl, she is spoilt. Iam fond of good wine, but where am I to get it? Ata wine merchant’s? Whatever I do, he is sure to poison me. If I really wish to be well served, what trouble and embarrassment it entails! I must have friends, correspondents, give commissions, write, go backwards and forwards, wait, and in the end be often deceived! What

trouble with my money! my fear of it is greater than my fondness for good wine. Times without number, during my apprenticeship and afterwards, I have gone out with the intention of buying some delicacy. Coming to a pastrycook’s shop, I notice some women at the counter; I think I can already see them laughing amongst themselves at the little glutton. I go to a fruiterer’s; I eye the fine pears; their smell me tempts me. Two or three young people close by me look at me; a man who knows the it is distance: the in ng approachi is standing in front of his shop; I see a girl the passershousemaid? My short-sightedness causes all kinds of illusions. I take all my obstacle; some by restrained d, by for acquaintances; everywhere I am intimidate with consumed fool, a like home return I desire increases with my shame, and at last having had the longing, having in my pocket the means of satisfying it, and yet not courage to buy anything. my money was I should enter into the most insipid details if, in relating how assment, the shame, the spent by myself or others, I were to describe the embarr

which I have always repugnance, the inconvenience, the annoyances of all kinds of my life, becomes course the ng experienced. In proportion as the reader, followi without my takthis, all tand unders acquainted with my real temperament, he will ing the trouble to tell him. one of my apparent This being understood, it will be easy to comprehend greatest contempt the with avarice ‘nconsistencies—the union of an almost sordid that it never ience, conven little so find I for money. It is a piece of furniture in which have got if, I when that, and it, got not enters my mind to long for it when I have use of make to how ng knowi of want for I keep it for along time without spending it, ts presen unity opport ble agreea and it in a way to please myself; but if a convenient s Beside it. know I before empty is itself, Imake such good use of it that my purse

curious characteristic of misers—that of this, one need not expect to find in me that on the contrary, I spend in secret for the sake of

spending for the sake of ostentation; I conceal it. I feel so strongly that enjoyment; far from glorying in my expenditure, to have any, still more to make ed asham money is of no use to me, that I am almost tably upon, I am certain comfor live to use of it. If |had ever had an income sufficient have spent it all, without should I a miser. that I should never have been tempted to be

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attempting to increase it; but my precarious circumstances make me careful. Iworship freedom; I abhor restraint, trouble, dependence. As long as the money in my purse lasts, it assures my independence; it relieves me of the trouble of finding expedients to replenish it, a necessity which always inspired me with dread; but the fear of seeing it exhausted makes me hoard it carefully. The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing. My disinterestedness is, therefore, nothing but idleness; the pleasure of possession is not worth the trouble of acquisition. In like manner, my extravagance is nothing but idleness; when the opportunity of spending agreeably presents itself, it cannot be too profitably employed. Money tempts me less than things, because between money and the possession of the desired object there is always an intermediary, whereas between the thing itself and the enjoyment of it there is none. IfIsee the thing, it tempts me; ifIonly see the means of gaining possession of it, it does not. For this reason I have committed thefts, and even now I sometimes pilfer trifles which tempt me, and which I prefer to take rather than to ask for; but neither when a child nor a grown-up man do I ever remember to have robbed anyone of a farthing, except on one occasion, fifteen years ago, when I stole seven /ivres ten sous. The incident is worth recording, for it contains a most extraordinary mixture of folly and impudence, which I should have found difficulty in believing if it concerned anyone but myself. It took place at Paris. | was walking with M. de Franceuil in the Palais-Royal about five o'clock. He pulled out his watch, looked at it, and said: “Let us go to the Opera.” I agreed; we went. He took two tickets for the amphitheatre, gave me one, and went on in front with the other. I followed him; he went in. Entering after him,

I found the door blocked. I looked, and seeing everybody standing up, thought it would be easy to lose myself in the crowd, or at any rate to make M. de Franceuil believe that I had lost myself. I went out, took back my check, then my money, and went off, without thinking that as soon as I had reached the door everybody had taken their seats, and that M. de Franceuil clearly saw that I was no longer there. As nothing was ever more foreign to my disposition than such behaviour, I mention it in order to show that there are moments of semi-delirium during which men must not be judged by their actions. I did not exactly want to steal the money, I wanted to steal the employment of it; the less of a theft it was, the greater its disgracefulness. I should never finish these details if I were to follow all the paths along which, during my apprenticeship, I descended from the sublimity of heroism to the depths of worthlessness. And yet, although I adopted the vices of my position, I could not altogether acquire a taste for them. I wearied of the amusements of my companions;

and when excessive restraint had rendered work unendurable to me, I grew tired of everything. This renewed my taste for reading, which I had for some time lost. This reading, for which I stole time from my work, became a new offence which brought new punishment upon me. The taste for it, provoked by constraint, became a passion, and soon a regular madness. La Tribu, a well-known lender of books, provided me with all kinds of literature. Good or bad, all were alike to me; I had no choice, and

read everything with equal avidity. I read at the work-table, I read on my errands,

Confessions

I read in the wardrobe, and forgot myself for hours together; my head became giddy with reading; I could do nothing else. My master watched me, surprised me, beat me, took away my books. How many volumes were torn, burnt, and thrown out of the window! how many works were left in odd volumes in La Tribu’s stock! When I had no more money to pay her, I gave her my shirts, neckties, and clothes; my three sous of pocket-money were regularly taken to her every Sunday. Well, then, I shall be told, money had become necessary to me. That is true; but . it was not until my passion for reading had deprived me of all activity. Completely devoted to my new hobby, I did nothing but read, and no longer stole. Here again is one of my characteristic peculiarities. In the midst of a certain attachment to any manner of life, a mere trifle distracts me, alters me, rivets my attention, and finally becomes

a passion. Then everything is forgotten; I no longer think of anything except the new object which engrosses my attention. My heart beat with impatience to turn over the leaves of the new book which I had in my pocket; I pulled it out as soon as I was alone, and thought no more of rummaging my master’s work-room. I can hardly believe that I should have stolen even if I had had more expensive tastes. Limited to the present, it gave was not in my way to make preparations in this manner for the future. La Tribu my in book my had I as soon as me credit, the payments on account were small, and, the in passed honestly me to pocket, I forgot everything else. The money which came nothing was same manner into the hands of this woman; and, when she pressed me, to steal in foresight much too easier to dispose of than my own property. It required pay. to advance, and I was not even tempted to steal in order my dispoIn consequence of quarrels, blows, and secret and ill-chosen reading, d, and | perverte er altogeth sition became savage and taciturn; my mind became silly and from me keep not did lived like a misanthrope. However, if my good taste licenand filthy were as such from insipid books, my good fortune preserved me tious; not that La Tribu,

have a woman in all respects most accommodating, would

to increase their impormade any scruple about lending them to me; but, in order which had just the mystery of air tance, she always mentioned them to me with an and chance shame; from as disgust effect of making me refuse them, as much from old before years thirty than more aided my modest disposition so well, that I was nient inconve finds lady fine a I set eyes upon any of those dangerous books which because they can only be read with one hand. and want of occupation, durIn less than ayear I exhausted La Tribu’s little stock, of my childish and knavcured been ing my spare time, became painful to me. I had books I read, which, the by even ish propensities by my passion for reading, and sentiments than nobler with heart my although ill-chosen and frequently bad, filled everything that with sted Disgu me. ed those with which my sphere of life had inspir ed me was tempt have might which thing was within my reach, and feeling that every possible which might have flattered my too far removed from me, I saw nothing for an enjoyment, the object of which heart. My excited senses had long clamoured ed from actual enjoyment as if Ihad been I could not even imagine. I was as far remov , sensitive, I sometimes thought of my crazes sexless; and, already fully developed and strange situation, my restless imagination but saw nothing beyond them. In this me from myself and calmed my growing entered upon an occupation which saved f upon the situations which had interested sensuality. This consisted in feeding mysel

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me in the course of my reading, in recalling them, in varying them, in combining them, in making them so truly my own that I became one of the persons who filled my imagination, and always saw myself in the situations most agreeable to my taste; and that, finally, the fictitious state in which I succeeded in putting myself made me forget my actual state with which I was so dissatisfied. This love of imaginary objects, and the readiness with which I occupied myself with them, ended by disgusting me with everything around me, and decided that liking for solitude which has never left me. In the sequel we shall see more than once the curious effects of this disposition, apparently so gloomy and misanthropic, but which is really due to a too affectionate, too loving, and too tender heart, which, being unable to find any in existence resembling it, is obliged to nourish itself with fancies. For the present, it is sufficient for me to have defined the origin and first cause of a propensity which has modified all my passions, and which, restraining them by means of themselves, has always made me slow to act, owing to my excessive impetuosity in desire. In this manner I reached my sixteenth year, restless, dissatisfied with myself and everything, without any of the tastes of my condition of life, without any of the pleasures of my age, consumed by desires of the object of which I was ignorant, weeping without any cause for tears, sighing without knowing why—in short, tenderly caressing my chimeras, since I saw nothing around me which counterbalanced them. On Sundays, my fellow-apprentices came to fetch me after service to go and amuse myself with them. I would gladly have escaped from them if I had been able; but, once engaged in their amusements, I became more excited and went further than any of them; it was as difficult to set me going as to stop me. Such was always my disposition. During our walks outside the city I always went further than any of them without thinking about my return, unless others thought of it for me. Twice I was caught: the gates were shut before I could get back. The next day I was treated as may be imagined; the second time I was promised such a reception if it ever happened again, that I resolved not to run the risk of it; yet this third time, so dreaded, came to pass. My watchfulness was rendered useless by a confounded Captain Minutoli, who always shut the gate at which he was on guard half-an-hour before the others. I was returning with two companions. About half a league from the city I heard the retreat sounded: I doubled my pace: I heard the tattoo” beat, and ran with all my might. I arrived out of breath and bathed in perspiration; my heart beat; from a distance I saw the soldiers at their posts; | rushed up and cried out with a voice half-choked. It was too late! Twenty paces from the outposts, I saw the first bridge raised. I shuddered when I saw those terrible horns rising in the air—a sinister and fatal omen of the destiny which that moment was opening for me. In the first violence of my grief I threw myself on the glacis"' and bit the ground. My companions, laughing at their misfortune, immediately made up their minds

what to do. I did the same, but my resolution was different from theirs. On the spot I swore never to return to my master; and the next morning, when they entered the

*° tattoo: A signal, sounded before taps, to call soldiers to their barracks for the night.

*! glacis: The slope in front of the city walls.

Confessions

city after the gates were opened, I said good-bye to them for ever, only begging them secretly to inform my cousin Bernard of the resolution I had taken, and of the place where he might be able to see me once more. After I had entered wpon my apprenticeship I saw less of him. For some time we used to meet on Sunday, but gradually each of us adopted other habits, and we saw one another less frequently. I am convinced that his mother had much to do with this change. He was a child of the upper city; I, a poor apprentice, was only a child of Saint-Gervais.” In spite of our relationship, there was no longer any equality between us; it was derogatory to him to associate with me. However, relations were not entirely broken off between us, and, as he was a good-natured lad, he sometimes followed the

dictates of his heart instead of his mother’s instructions. When he was informed of

my resolution, he hastened to me, not to try and dissuade me from it or to share it,

but to lessen the inconveniences of my flight by some small presents, since my own resources could not take me very far. Amongst other things he gave me a small sword, which had taken my fancy exceedingly, and which I carried as far as Turin, where necessity obliged me to dispose of it, and where, as the saying is, I passed it he through my body. The more I have since reflected upon the manner in which he that convinced felt have I more the behaved towards me at this critical moment, inconceivis it for father; his of perhaps followed the instructions of his mother, and me back, or able that, left to himself, he would not have made some effort to keep me in my encouraged rather he no! but, would not have been tempted to follow; determined, he left me plan than tried to dissuade me; and, when he saw me quite

each other since. without shedding many tears. We have never corresponded or seen each other. love to made were we It is a pity: his character was essentially good; my eyes fora turn to me allow lot, my of Before I abandon myself to the fatality me if I awaited have would things, of moment upon the destiny which, in the nature dispomy to e suitabl more was g Nothin had fallen into the hands of a better master. of a lot obscure and quiet the than sition or better adapted to make me happy of rs engrave the of that as such class respectable artisan, especially of a certain but ood, livelih table comfor a afford to ve Geneva. Such a position, sufficiently lucrati my ambition for the rest of not sufficiently so to lead to fortune, would have limited e modest tastes, would cultivat to leisure my days, and, leaving me an honourable the means of getting me g offerin t withou have confined me within my own sphere, callings with their all y beautif to enough out of it. My imaginative powers were rich one to another; from will at speak, to so chimeras, and strong enough to transport me, position I actually found myself. so it would have been immaterial to me in what

air, place where I was to my first castle in the It could not have been so far from the this abode there without any difficulty. From

that I could not have taken up my that which involved the least trouble alone it followed that the simplest vocation, t mental freedom, was the one which and anxiety, that which allowed the greates own. I should have passed a peaceful and suited me best: and that was exactly my

; Rousseau lived in the Saintin the more fashionable part of Geneva 22He .. . Saint-Gervais: Bernard lived Gervais, the poorer part. -

ee

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quiet life, such as my disposition required, in the bosom of my religion, my country, my family, and my friends, in the monotony of a profession that suited my taste, and in a society after my own heart. I should have been a good Christian, a good citizen, a good father of a family, a good friend, a good workman, a good man in every rela-

tion oflife. I should have loved my position in life, perhaps honoured it; and, having

—I should have died spent a life— simple, indeed, and obscure, but calm and serene

peacefully in the bosom of my family. Though, doubtless, at least have been regretted as long as anyone remembered Instead of that—what picture am I going to draw? sorrows of my life; I shall occupy my readers more than choly subject.

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RAMPRASAD

soon forgotten, | should me. Let us not anticipate the enough with this melan-

SEN

B. INDIA, 1718-1775

BAHK-tee SHAHK-tee; KAH-lee RAHM-pruh-sahd

The intensely religious village life of India produced not only storytellers— whose primary purpose was transmitting the stories of gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines—but also poets who expressed ordinary people’s spiritual longing for God. Emotional worship or surrender to God in Hinduism is called bhakti. Bhakti became a religious movement in India during the religious reforms of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. A particular version of bhakti was devoted to feminine divinity; in India there had been a long history of worshiping the great goddess Shakti’ — also known as Kali and Durga—but a resurgence of her worship, led by the poet Ramprasad Sen, took place in Bengal’ during the eighteenth century. Like medieval Christian poets devoted to the Virgin Mother, Bengal poets of this time favored the feminine dimension of God, which

EE For more afacmakionetece Rampracadtees bsecfordcen memes -com/worldlit compact.

seemed to invite a personal relationship, an opportunity for conversation, and expressions of sadness and longing. Ramprasad’s simple lyricism and familiar images touched a broad range of listeners; his songs appealed to scholars and peasants alike. His poetic skills influenced succeeding generations of Indian poets. Rabindranath Tagore, the most famous Bengali writer of the late nineteenth century, composed Kali songs even though he was not a worshiper of Kali himself; he merged the goddess’s image with nationalistic devotion.

'Shakti: Shakti is the collective name for the consort of Shiva who has several names. Shakti is the feminine

dynamic energy by which God creates, preserves, and dissolves the world. Kali is usually portrayed as terrifying: blue-black, three-eyed, and four-armed, with a necklace of human heads and a girdle of severed hands. Durga,

“the unfathomable one,” is one of the oldest versions of the Great Mother: fair complexioned and riding a lion, she releases humans from rebirth with her touch.

* Bengal: A region in the northeast Indian peninsula, now divided between India and Bangladesh.

Ramprasad Sen, 1718-1775

439

The Holy Family: Shiva, Parvati, and

Their Children on Mount Kailasa, c. 1800

An androgynous, naked Shiva ts attended by Parvati, his spouse, who offers him liquid refreshment. The bull represents Shiva; the lion, Parvati; and the elephant-headed creature is Ganesha, a popular Hindu god. (Courtesy of the British Museum)

Poet and Legend.

Ramprasad

Sen was

born in Kumarhatta,

now

tta. His father, Ramram Sen, Halishar, about twenty-five miles from Calcu . Ramprasad had a minimal was of the Vaidyas caste—that of physicians n, and Hindi as well as BenPersia it, education and was versed in Sanskr tta as a clerk with an estate gali. As a young man he got a job in Calcu r than paying attention to the manager, Valulachandra Ghosal. Rathe his employer discovered the accounts, Ramprasad wrote poetry. When was angry, but Ghosal was he time way Ramprasad was spending his to serve Kali and provided him sympathetic to the young man’s yearnings

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RAMPRASAD

These [Ramprasad’s

poems] have gone to the heart ofa people as few poets’ work has done. Such songs

as the exquisite “This day will surely pass,

Mother, this day will pass,” | have heard from coolies on the road or workers in the paddy fields; |

have heard it by

SEN

with a pension and an introduction to the court of the Raja of Krishnagar. Here Ramprasad rose to the position of “Entertainer of Poets.” Ramprasad became famous during his lifetime, and there are numerous legends about his encounters with Kali and her demands on him. His poems, which were first passed down orally, have been collected in several volumes. Vidyasundar, which was composed in the 1760s or 1770s, is an

extended poem about how the Raja of Kanchi’s son won the hand of the Raja of Burdwan’s daughter. Kalikirttan is a collection of songs or hymns to Kali. The poems in Krishnakirttan are devoted to Krishna. Ramprasad died in 1775. One legend says that he died with a Kali

song on his lips, beseeching her to save him, and that indeed he slipped away from the endless cycle of reincarnations into Brahman. In another version, Ramprasad followed an image of Kali into the Ganges River while reciting poems to her and drowned. He was regarded a saint.

broad rivers at sunset, when the

parrots were flying to roost and the village folk thronging from marketing to

the ferry. ... — critic EDWARD THOMPSON, 1923

Background for Bengali Songs to Kali. In most world religions there are at least two significant paths followed by most practitioners: the path of legalism and the path of mysticism. The first is a matter of believing certain doctrines, following prescribed rules or laws, and performing certain rituals interpreted and led by a priest, minister, rabbi, or imam. The second is one of direct, personal experience of the sacred and involves various tech-

niques for achieving mystical union with the divine without the mediation of a priest or institution. In the history of Hinduism, Brahmanism‘ represents the orthodox path of legalism: The Brahman priest, who masters the appropriate ceremonies or rituals, serves as an intercessor between the worshiper and god. The mystical cults in India are grouped under the name bhakti, a Sanskrit word meaning the path of total surrender to god as a means of achieving salvation. A guru, rather than a priest, serves as a bhakti guide. For both the orthodox and the bhakti the goal is the same: Salvation is moksha, the release from samsara—the cycle of life, death, and

rebirth—in order to be unified with God. Since the tenth century of Indian history, Hinduism had primarily centered around the worship of two deities: Vishnu—in his manifestations, or avatars, as Rama and Krishna—and Shiva. In Hinduism, wor-

shipers are also often devoted to the consort of a deity; when the goddess is recognized as the energy or power behind existence, she is known as Shakti. Ramprasad’s particular kind of bhakti worship was directed at Shiva’s consort, Shakti or the Great Mother. The rituals and meditative practices

describing the Shakti pathway are contained in sacred texts called Tantra; Shaktism is also called Tantrism. A particular branch of tantric worship involves sexual practices that are said to lead to a mystical union with Shakti.

* Brahman: In Hinduism, the Absolute Reality which transcends all thought, all names, and definitions. There is no equivalent concept in religions that feature a personal god. *Brahmanism: Brahmanism recognizes the creator Brahma and the priestly class of Brahmans who administer the appropriate Hindu rituals.

°Vishnu . . . Shiva: Manifestations of Brahman, the Absolute or Ultimate Being. They form a trinity with Brahma, the creator, who has little ceremonial or cult importance.

Ramprasad Sen, 1718-1775

441

As a couple, Shiva represents transcendent power and Kali immanent or manifested power. Kali is usually represented as dancing or in sexual union with Shiva. Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886), a famous mystic

from the nineteenth century, described one of his visions of Kali in a way that described her two aspects coming together. He saw a beautiful woman emerge from the Ganges and approach a grove of trees where he was meditating. The woman gave birth to a beautiful baby, and she gently nursed it. After a while she suddenly changed into a horrible monster. She took the infant in her ugly jaws and crushed it. She chewed it, swallowed it, and then returned to the Ganges and disappeared into the water. Sri Ramakrishna’s vision exemplifies the idea of Kali as a totality that reconciles creation and dissolution. Ramprasad’s KaliSongs. To somebody living in the West, writing love songs to the terrible and ferocious Kali might seem strange, yet Kali embraces many aspects of life. For Ramprasad, Kali ultimately represented release from the endless sufferings of mortality. In his poems, Ramprasad uses standard bhakti themes: Kali’s neglect of her devotee, her carelessness, her preoccupation with wild dancing and her habit of standing on Shiva; the poet complains about her and threatens to give up on her. Kali’s role as a goddess in the universe parallels the role she plays in Ramprasad’s poetry and life. Because Ramprasad’s poems were initially passed down orally, multiple versions of the same poem arose, a challenge for any translator. Furthermore, these Kali songs were usually written in simple, colloquial Bengali, which demands a colloquial American English translation in order to communicate the voice of the poems. Kali is often addressed as “Mother” in the songs, suggesting the personal relationship of a child to its mother, or the feelings of the individual toward the greater, cosmic reality. In “It’s This Hope in Hope,” Ramprasad laments being lured into this world by Kali and fooled by the world’s appearance of sweetness. Ramprasad’s sense of play is evident in “The Dark Mother Is Flying a Kite,” although the metaphor of kite-flying ultimately takes on a serious dimension. In “Kali, Why Are You Naked Again?” the poet evokes the popular image of Kali standing on the body of Shiva and gently chides her about her nudity. Part of the poignant attraction of a Kali song comes from the contrast between the playful tenderness of the poet and the horrifying power of the goddess. As in a personal relationship, the poet expresses disappointment, threatens to break off contact, pinpoints the mother’s neglect. But in “Now Cry Kali and Take the Plunge!” the poet challenges himself to dive into the sea of consciousness and confesses his shortcomings and failures. “Why Should I Go to Kashi?” is an important statement not about the bhakti spiritual path; Ramprasad makes it clear that he does the offerings, sacrificial and personally subscribe to the path of pilgrimage Fear to More “What’s In m. Brahmanis with brand of Hinduism associated with an around This Place?” Ramprasad gives Shiva a role but concludes . With immortality image of Kali as a tree bearing the fruits of release and a tone established Ramprasad his clear, down-to-earth, accessible images, him. after writers of s generation by for Kali songs that was imitated

The peasants and the pandits enjoy his songs equally. They

draw solace from them in the hour

of despair and even at the moment of death. The dying man brought to the

banks of the Ganges

asks his companions to sing Ramprasadi songs. - critic SUKUMAR SEN, 1971

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RAMPRASAD

SEN ™@ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Cultural Background

Dutt, Romesh Chunder. Cultural Heritage of Bengal. 1962. Kinsley, David R. The Sword and the Flute: Kali and Krnsa, Dark Visions ofthe Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology. 1975. McDaniel, June. The Madness of the Saints: Ecstatic Religion in Bengal. 1989. Mookerjee, Ajit. Kali: The Feminine Force. 1988. Criticism

McLean, Malcolm. Devoted to the Goddess: The Life and Work of Ramprasad. 1998. Sen, Ramprasad. Grace and Mercy in Her Wild Hair: Selected Poems to the Mother

Goddess. 1982. (See the introduction by Leonard Nathan and Clinton Seely.) Sen, Sukumar. History of Bengali Literature. 1971. Thompson, Edward J., and Arthur Marshman Spencer. Bengali Religious Lyrics,

Sakta. 1923. B@ PRONUNCIATION

bhakti: BAHK-tee Kali: KAH-lee

Ramprasad: RAHM-pruh-sahd Shakti: SHAK-tee

Cw

Its This Hope in Hope This and the following five poems translated by Leonard Nathan and Clinton Seely

It’s this hope in hope, this happening again To be in the world, this being over and over, The bee’s blunder when it goes for The painted version of the lotus. You've given me bitter leaves,

Swearing they were sweet, and my old Sweet tooth has cost me a whole day Spitting the bitterness out. Mother, You lured me into this world,

10

You said: “Let’s play,” only to cheat My hope out of its hope with Your playing. Ramprasad says:' In this game The end was a foregone conclusion. Now, at dusk, take up Your child In Your arms and go home. "Ramprasad says: It is common for Ramprasad to use his own name in these oral poems, as a way to identify the poet. Doing so also allows him to enter the poem as an identifiable voice.

The Dark Mother Is Flying a Kite

Cw

The Dark Mother Is Flying a Kite The dark Mother Is flying a kite In the world’s fairground. O, Mind, see—you are up there In the gusts of hope, Payed out on the string of illusion, Your frame strung together Skeleton and pulse stuck on. But the Maker overdid it,

Giving the kite too much ego’ In the building, Toughening the string with glue

And powdered glass.’ So Mother, if out of a thousand kites You lose one or two,

Laugh and clap. Prasad’ says: that kite is going to take off

short for Ramprasad

In the southern breeze, And on the other shore Of this ocean of lives It will dive fast to its freedom.

hope, akin ‘ego: Ramprasad refers to his “Mind,” meaning that part of him that is subject to delusion and false a choosing stanza, third the in ego” much “too saying by to the term psyche. The translators add to the concept used. have not would Ramprasad that Freud Sigmund with word associated of cutting down 2 powdered glass: Kite strings are coated with glue and powdered glass for the purpose another flyer’s kite.

443

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| RAMPRASAD SEN

Cw

Kali, Why Are You Naked Again? Kali, why are You naked again? Good grief, haven’t You any shame?

Mother, don’t You have clothes? Where is the pride of a king’s daughter? And, Mother, is this some family duty— This standing on the chest of Your man? You're naked, He’s naked,

You hang around the burning grounds.’ 10

O, Mother, we are dying of shame. Now put on Your woman’s clothes. Mother, Your necklace gleams, Those human heads shine at Your throat.

Prasad says: Even Shiva fears You When You're like this.

‘burning grounds: The places where bodies are cremated, the place where Shiva and Kali cut away all unnecessary, egotistical elements from the human psyche.

Now Cry Kali and Take the Plunge!

Cw

Now Cry Kali and Take the Plunge! Now cry Kali and take the plunge! O, my Mind, dive into this sea, This heart which has yet to be sounded. There are gems down there that two or three dives Aren't going to get. Now, hold your breath

And jump! Kick down to where She sits’ Deep in the wise waters, a great pearl. You can do it, all it takes Is overwhelming love and the memory

Of Shiva’s good words.’ Down there the Six Passions cruise Like crocodiles snapping at anything That moves, so cover yourself with knowledge Like turmeric’ smeared on the skin— The odor will keep them off. I tell you there’s a world of wealth In that water. Ramprasad says: Dive in And youre going to come up with a fortune.

or at the base of the spinal column, in 1She sits: A reference to Kali’s residence at the bottom of consciousness

of the spinal column to the top the lowest chakra. The six chakras are centers of energy stretching from the base of the head. . 2 Shiva’s good words: Shiva is the speaker in the tantric texts. . crocodiles off ward it is believed to 3turmeric: A yellow plant of the ginger family; smeared on the body, passions. the off ward help to ascetic the of Turmeric may also refer to adopting the yellow robes

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SEN

Why Should I Go to Kashi? Why should I go to Kashi?’ At Her feet you'll find it all— Gaya,’ the Ganges, Kashi.

Meditating in my lotus heart” I float on blissful waters. Her feet are red lotuses Crammed with shrines

And Her name spoken Consumes evil like a fire

10

In a pile of dry cotton. If there is no head to worry, You can’t have a headache.

20

Everytime I hear about Gaya, The offerings there, the good deeds Recited, I laugh. I know Shiva Has said that dying at Kashi saves. But I know too that salvation Always follows worship around Like a slave, and what’s this salvation If it swallows the saved like water In water? Sugar I love But haven't the slightest desire To merge with sugar.

Ramprasad says with amazement: Grace and mercy in Her wild hair— Think of that

And all good things’ are yours.

"Kashi: Kashi is Benares, the residence of Shiva, and one of the most sacred sites along the Ganges.

* Gaya: A place of pilgrimage in northeastern India, the site of Gautama Buddha’s enlightenment. 3 lotus heart: The fourth chakra, the center of mystical powers. * good things: There are four good things to get from life: 1. (dharma) lawful order, sacred duty, and moral virtue; 2. (artha) power and success; 3. (kama) love and pleasure; and 4. (moksha) release from delusion and the limitations of existence.

What’s More to Fear around This Place?

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What’s More to Fear around This Place? What’s more to fear

Around this place?

My body is Tara’s’ field In which the God of Gods Like a good farmer

Sows His seed with a great mantra.” Around this body, faith Is set like a fence

With patience for posts. With Shiva watching What can the thieves of time Hope to do? He oversees the Six Oxen

Driving them out of the barn. He mows the grass of sin With the honed blade of Kali’s name. Love rains down And Devotion night and day. Prasad says: On Kali’s tree Goodness, wealth, love and release

Can be had for the picking.

—the popular Tara of Tibetan Buddhism. ‘Tara: Another name for Kali; this is not —on the surface at least 2 mantra: A sacred utterance, often used for meditation.

447

TEXT

IN CONTEXT

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano 454 IMAGES: Portrait of Olaudah Equiano,1789

Slave Ship

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450

TIME AND PLACE: Nineteenth-Century Americas:

The Haitian Revolution 453 MAP: The Voyages of Olaudah Equiano

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Slave Narratives and Emancipation

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OLAUDAH

494

EQUIANO

B. AFRICA, 1745-1797

oh-LOW-dah eh-kwee-AH-noh

About two years before the publication of the misadventures of Voltaire’s ill-fated hero Candide, a ten-year-old African was kidnapped from his home in Essaka, in what is now Nigeria. An innocent like Candide, this young man was taken into slavery and eventually sold to traders on the Atlantic coast, where he would embark on a very real journey into misfortune, oppression, and despair. His eloquent tale of betrayal, enslavement, hardship, and finally emancipation, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, was published in London in 1789. Although a few slaves had told their stories in print before—most notably Ignatius Sancho’ and Ottobah Cugoano*— Equiano’s Travels, as it is often called, marks a crucial moment in the development of a significant new literary genre, the SLAVE NARRATIVE. Reflecting its author's spiritual and intellectual resolution and framing the incidents of his life as a slave in a deeply felt humanitarianism, this story would inspire over the next century such works as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861).

"Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780): Writer of the African diaspora who was born aboard a slave ship and educated

in the household of the Duchess of Montagu; he became an art critic and grocer, and corresponded with several important figures in England. His Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho appeared in 1782. ? Ottobah Cugoano (1757?-early nineteenth century): African writer who, like Equiano, was captured from

the western coast of Africa and sold into slavery.

448

Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1797

Ibo Life. Equiano’s “round unvarnished tale,” as it was called in an early review, begins with a brief description of his birth in 1745. His father, he tells us, was one of the chief elders, the Embrenche, of his community, and as a child Equiano was blessed with good omens. In the first chapter of his book, Equiano describes the society, religious beliefs, and customs of the Ibo people with whom he spent his childhood. Within each village, a council of elders settled matters that affected the community and mediated disputes between parties. Nonetheless, a village assembly, which was open to all except the osu or slaves, ensured that members of the village had a voice in the decision-making process. As can be seen in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which describes the Ibo traditions more than a century after Equiano’s death, the Ibo also were organized along a complex system of age-group, kinship, and ritual ties. In the eighteenth century, they had an intricate network of trade among themselves and with their neighbors to the south who inhabited the city-states in the Niger delta region. Among the “commodities” traded were human beings, and when he was about eleven, Equiano was kidnapped by a raiding party and eventually taken to the Atlantic coast to be sold into slavery.

Portrait of Olaudah Equiano, 1789

This engraving appeared in the first publication of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Note that Equiano is holding a Bible opened to Acts, Chapters IV and V. (Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.)

EE-boh

p. 1604

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Rid Forlinks to more information

about Olaudah Equiano and quizzes

on The Interesting Narrative, see bedford stmartins.com/

worldlitcompact.

OLAUDAH

EQUIANO

Slavery. Equiano’s story up to this point is fairly typical of the thou| —_—_sands of men, women, and children who were kidnapped by rival tribes or parties of raiders and exchanged for rifles, textiles, tobacco, iron, | brass, and other items. Sometimes, as in Equiano’s case, the captured | — would pass through a number of hands on their forced journey to the = = ; : coastal towns along the Gold Coast or in the Niger delta, where they were held in forts until sold to European slave traders. From there they were packed into the infamous “slavers,’ the crowded ships that would take them to the West Indies or the United States. In his narrative, Equiano describes the horrible conditions aboard the slave ship, the anxieties and sorrows he suffered upon being moved from place to place and being separated from his sister. He was taken to Barbados, then to Virginia, and sold to a plantation owner. Within a few months he was sold again to Michael Henry Pascal, a British naval captain, with whom Equiano sailed to England, Holland, and North America, where his ship engaged in battles during the Seven Years’ War. Through Pascal, Equiano learned to read and write, and he was treated with kindness | and with some measure of respect by Pascal’s relatives, the Guerins, in London. In 1763 Pascal sold Equiano to Captain James Doran, who took him to the West Indies, where he finally ended up the property of Robert King, a Quaker merchant. Freedom. Equiano notes early on that the name Olaudah means “fortunate one,” and although his life would suggest the opposite, he reminds readers who haven’t seen the horrors of the slave trade that, by comparison with most Africans taken into slavery, he can only

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.

ANRRIARA ARTA SWS

Slave Ship

Along with slave narratives, abolitionists circulated illustrations of the horrendous conditions aboard slave ships. (Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.)

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Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1797

consider himself “as a particular favorite of Heaven.” Working for King, Equiano managed to save enough money to buy his freedom on July 4, 1766. He writes: “Before night, I, who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of another, was become my own master, and completely free.” Nonetheless, partly because he felt a debt of gratitude, Equiano remained in King’s service as an able-bodied sailor for another year. On July 26, 1767, Equiano left for London, where he worked for a while as a hairdresser and bolstered his education before returning to the life he had come to know as a seafarer and small trader. Signing on with several ships in various capacities, Equiano traveled widely during this time throughout the Mediterranean as well as to Central America, the West Indies, and the Arctic. He traveled with Constantine John Phipps, who led a dangerous expedition by way of the Arctic in search of a northeast passage to India. That voyage had a profound influence on Equiano’s life; the ships were for some time trapped in frozen waters, and Equiano once nearly drowned during an attempt to drag the boats free from the ice. The experience, he writes, “made a lasting impression on my mind, and by the grace of God proved afterwards a mercy to me; it caused me to reflect deeply on my eternal state, and to seek the Lord with full purpose of heart ere it was too late.” Conversion.

Equiano’s conversion marks an important turning

point in his autobiography and aligns the narrative with spiritual autobiographies such as Augustine’s Confessions and slave narratives such as Frederick Douglass’s, texts in which conversion to Christianity is a climactic moment in the plot. Equiano’s conversion experience is fraught with doubt and uncertainty, troubled dreams and feelings of guilt, leading ultimately to a vision on October 6, 1774, of Jesus on the

cross. In the months leading up to his conversion and in the months it takes to unfold, Equiano studies the Bible carefully, puzzling over key passages and seeking advice from others. Often he pauses over the discrepancy between Christian teachings and slavery, shocked by the hypocrisy of those who preach the former and practice the latter. He also notes similarities between Christian and especially Hebrew practices and the customs of the Ibo. Once convinced of the authenticity of his spiritual transformation and well studied in the Bible, Equiano joined the Methodist Church and became something of an evangelist, sparring over doctrine with a Catholic priest in Cadiz and preaching to the Mosquito Indians during his voyage to Central America in 1776. After establishing his residence

451

Equiano’s Narrative is so richly structured

that it became the

prototype of the nineteenth-century slave narrative. — Henry Louis Gates

Jr., The Classic Slave Narratives, 1987

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Surely this traffic cannot be good,

which spreads like a

pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of

mankind, equality and independency, and gives one mana

dominion over his fellows which God could never intend!

OLAUDAH

EQUIANO

in London, Equiano grew into an active leader in the abolitionist and antislavery movement and worked for a while as the commissary of stores and provisions for the Sierra Leone project, an effort to resettle displaced Africans in Sierra Leone. In 1787 he founded the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group, and in 1790 he submitted a petition to Parliament advocating the abolition of slavery. In 1792, Equiano married Susanna Cullen, with whom he had two daughters, Anna Maria and Johanna. In 1796, a few months after the birth of their second daughter, Susanna died, followed by Equiano on March 31, 1797. Anna Maria sur-

vived her father by only a few months, leaving behind only Johanna, who inherited £950 from the family estate in 1816 when she turned twenty-one; after that, nothing more is known of her.

— OLAUDAH EQuiANo,

Interesting Narrative

Work. First published in 1789, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African was enormously popular in England and the United States, with eight English and one American edition printed by 1794. By 1797 the work had been translated into Dutch,

Russian, and French. As a work of autobiography, moral exhortation, and social criticism, Equiano’s book greatly enhanced the growing antislavery movement in England that eventually led to the abolition in that country of the slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation of slaves in the British colonies in 1833-34. But Equiano’s narrative also came under attack, with

charges of fraud raised against the text’s accuracy, the author’s identity, and the story’s very authenticity. In the preface to a sixth edition, Equiano answers these charges, labeling them “invidious falsehoods.” The authenticity of slave narratives was questioned often in England and the United States. Following Equiano’s example, both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs added to their titles the phrase, “Written by Himself” or “Written by Herself,” in anticipation of such doubts. While important as a social text, The Life of Olaudah Equiano is also a significant literary achievement that exerted a powerful influence on subsequent slave narratives and generations of Anglo-African and African American writers, including some present-day authors. As critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. observes in The Classic Slave Narratives, “Equiano’s Narrative is so richly structured that it became the prototype of the nineteenth-century slave narrative.” Gates points to a key structural feature of the slave narrative, a weaving together of plots in which the passage from slavery to emancipation follows from or is accompanied by a transition from oral culture to written culture and a surrendering to spiritual, Christian redemption. Rhetorically moving and vividly descriptive, Equiano’s Life personalizes what for most readers are remote horrors, even as it presents Equiano himself as an exemplary

TIME

AND

PLACE

Nineteenth-Century Americas: The Haitian Revolution In 1789, the year of the French Revolution and

the year when Equiano’s Narrative was pub-

In the wake ofthe violence in France, white

than halfa million included about 25,000

small holders (petits blancs who worked small farms) and large plantation owners (grands blancs) in St. Domingue marshaled their slaves into fighting forces and struggled against each other for political control of the colony. However, when the French National Assembly granted political rights to propertied gens de

white colonists, an equal number offree

couleur in 1790, the whites banded together

citizens of mixed descent, or gens de couleur

to prevent racial equality, and the political struggle turned into a racial war. Slaves originally mobilized to fight for their white masters chose to fight for their own emancipation. Pierre-Dominique Toussaint-Louverture became governor general of the colony in 1797, and led the slaves to defeat one opponent after another—the white plantation owners and small holders, invading forces of Spanish and English troops, and Napoleon’s army of

lished, St. Domingue, now Haiti, was France’s

most prosperous colony. It produced twofifths of the world’s sugar and half the world’s coffee, and it accounted for forty percent of French overseas trade. Its population of more

as they were known, and more than 500,000

slaves of African descent. The struggle for liberty, fraternity, and equality in France was translated into a slave rebellion in this colonial context.

44,000, led by the emperor’s brother-in-law,

General Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc. Toussaint-Louverture was captured by trickery during the Napoleonic campaign and imprisoned in France, where he died in captivity. His successor Jean-Jacques

Dessalines declared the

colony’s independence on January 1, 1804. Although France managed to hold on to its other Caribbean colonies, the Haitian

Francois-Dominique Toussaint-Louverture Declaring the Constitution ofthe Republic of Haiti, July, 1801. Toussaint-Louverture, the “black Napolean,” is shown

here with Haiti’s constitution in hand. The presence of _ God and the bishop in this engraving is an expression of the divine source and inspiration of the document.

_ (The Bridgeman Art Library)

Revolution redefined the aims of the French Revolution for the Western Hemisphere. It spurred on antislavery movements that led to the abolition of the slave trade and eventually slavery itselfinthe British and French colonies. It also encouraged abolitionists in the United States and linked emancipation with the causes of freedom and democracy in the West. Convinced that the example of Haiti would bring about more revolutions, slaveholders throughout the Americas developed what historian Anthony Maingot has

called a “terrified consciousness.”

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p. 302 p. 232

OLAUDAH

EQUIANO

figure who embodies the ENLIGHTENMENT ideals of ingenuity, stoic fortitude, and compassion for others. As a travelogue, moral critique, and adventure story, The Life of Olaudah Equiano shares features with Candide and even with Swift's Gulliver’s Travels. Yet in Equiano’s odyssey, the hardships and oppression are not fiction but reality. @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography Walvin, James. An African’s Life: The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1797. 1998. Background

Acholonu, Catherine Obianuju. The /gbo Roots of Olaudah Equiano. 1989. Davis, Charles T., and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Slave’s Narrative. 1985. Edwards, Paul. Black Writers in England, 1760-1890. 1991. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.The Classic Slave Narratives. 1987. Criticism

Allison, Robert, ed. Introduction. The Interesting Narrative of the Life ofOlaudah Equiano, Written by Himself. 1995.

Costanzo, Angelo. Surprising Narrative: Olaudah Equiano and the Beginnings of Black Autobiography. 1987. Edwards, Paul, ed. Introduction. The Life ofOlaudah Equiano. 1988. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and William L. Andrews, eds. Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772-1815. 1998.

Sandiford, Keith. Measuring the Moment: Strategies of Protest in Eighteenth-Century Afro-English Writing. 1988.

B PRONUNCIATION

Olaudah Equiano: oh-LOW-dah eh-kwee-AH-noh Ibo: EE-boh

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Chapter 1

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The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

FROM CHAPTER 1 [EQuIANO’s IGBo Roots] I believe it is difficult for those who publish their own memoirs to escape the imputation of vanity; nor is this the only disadvantage under which they labor: it is also their misfortune that what is uncommon

is rarely, if ever, believed, and what is

obvious we are apt to turn from with disgust, and to charge the writer with impertinence. People generally think those memoirs only worthy to be read or remembered which abound in great or striking events, those, in short, which in a high

degree excite either admiration or pity; all others they consign to contempt and oblivion. It is therefore, I confess, not a little hazardous in a private and obscure individual, and a stranger too, thus to solicit the indulgent attention of the public,

especially when I own I offer here the history of neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant. I believe there are few events in my life which have not happened to many; it is true the incidents of it are numerous, and, did I consider myself an European, I might say my sufferings were great; but when I compare my lot with that of most of my countrymen, I regard myself as a particular favorite of heaven, and acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life. If, then, the following narrative does not appear sufficiently interesting to engage general attention, let my motive be some excuse for its publication. I am not so foolishly vain as to expect from it either immortality or literary reputation. If it affords any satisfaction to my numerous friends, at whose request it has been written, or in the smallest degree promotes the interests of humanity, the ends for which it was undertaken will be fully attained, and every wish of my heart gratified. Let it therefore be remembered, that, in wishing to avoid censure, I do not aspire to praise. That part of Africa, known by the name of Guinea, to which the trade for slaves is carried on, extends along the coast above 3400 miles, from Senegal to Angola, and includes a variety of kingdoms. Of these the most considerable is the kingdom of Benin,' both as to extent and wealth, the richness and cultivation of the soil, the

power of its king, and the number and warlike disposition of the inhabitants. It is situated nearly under the line,’ and extends along the coast about 170 miles, but runs back into the interior part of Africa to a distance hitherto, I believe, unexplored by

Narrative (Boston: A note on the text: The text reprinted here is from Robert Allison’s edition of The Interesting or adapted from those of Allison. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1995). All notes, unless otherwise indicated, are taken

the Niger delta to the city of 1 Benin: The kingdom of Benin, with its capital in the city of Benin, extended from Lagos.

* the line: The equator.

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The Interesting Narrative of the Life ofOlaudah Equiano, Chapter 1 And cast . . . feet: An allusion to Revelation 4:10-11: “The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast down their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power.”

African American Folk Songs: Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Chile 10

Deep river, my home is over Jordan, Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.

Lord, I want to cross over into campground, Lord, I want to cross over into campground,

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Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd!

Follow the drinkin’ gourd! Follow the drinkin’ gourd! For the old man is a-waitir’ for to carry you to freedom If you follow the drinkin’ gourd When the sun comes up & the first quail calls /Follow... For the old man is a-waitin for to carry you.../Follow... The river bank will make a mighty good road The dead trees will show you the way Left foot, peg foot, travelin’ on .../Follow... 10

The river ends between two hills/ Follow... There’s another river on the other side. . / Follow...

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Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Chile

1.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile, Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile, Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile, Far, far away from home,

A long, long ways from home. Then I get down on my knees an’ pray. Get down on my knees an’ pray. Ds

Sometimes I feel like ’m almost gone, Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone, Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone, pointed 1 -&

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JOSEPH CONRAD

a hammock slung under a pole. As* he weighed sixteen stone’ I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed,'* ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night— quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me, and the next morning Anhour afterwards I came upon the I started the hammock off in front all right. whole concern.wrecked in a bush—man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody, _but there wasn’t the shadow of a carrier near. | remembered the old doctor— ‘It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot. I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no pur-

pose. On the fifteenth dayIcame in sight of the big river again, and hobbled into the Central Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three others enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gate it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout,

excitable chap with black moustaches, informed me with great volubility and many disgressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What, how, why? Oh, it was ‘all right’ The ‘manager himself’ was there. All quite correct. ‘Everybody had behaved splendidly! splen—‘you must, he said in agitation, ‘go and see the general manager at once. He didly!’ is waiting!’ “T did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it now, but Iam not sure—not at all. Certainly the affair was too stupid —when I think of it— to be altogether natural. Still... But at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, |had plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I had to set about it the very next day. That, and the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station, took some months. “My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit down after my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace 1in complexion, in feature, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary

build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps SE ge ee and he certainly could make his es fallon one as trenchant and an eavy as an axe. But even at these only an indefinable, ee expression of his lips, something stealthy smile— not a smile—I

remember it, but I can’t explain. It was unconscious, this smile was,

' stone: A British unit of weight equal to 14 pounds. Sixteen stone equals 224 pounds.

jibbed: Balked.

Heart of Darkness, 1

though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth up employed in these parts—nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! — nothing Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust —just uneasin ess more. You have no idea how effective such a...a... faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing,

for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him—why? Perhaps because he was never ill... He had served three terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitu\ tions is a kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave he rioted on a large scale—pompously. Jack’? ashore—with a difference—in externals only. This one —— could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing, he could keep the routine going—that’s all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one pause—for out there there were no external checks. Qnce when various tropical diseases had laid _

low almost every ‘agent’ in the station, he washeard to say, Men who come out here __ should have no entrails’ He sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as though it had been a door opening into adarkness he had in his keeping. You fancied you had | y seen things—but the seal was on. When annoyed at meal-times by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedence, he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a special house had to be built. This was the station’s mess-room. Where he sat was the first place—the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be his unalterable conviction. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed his ‘boy’ —an overfed young negro from the coast—to treat the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence. “He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the road. He could not wait. Had to start without me. The up-river stations had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did not know who was dead and who He paid no attention to my was alive, and how they got on—and so on, and so on. several times that the| repeated sealing-wax, of stick a with playing and, explanations, important staa very that rumours were There grave. very grave, ‘very was situation Mr. — not true. was it Hoped ill. , was Kurtz Mr. chief, its and y, jeopard ‘tion was in

Kurtz was .. . I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I interrupted him by

saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the coast. ‘Ah! So they talk of him down there, he murmured to himself. Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best_

agent he had, an exceptional man,of the greatest_ importance to the Company; _ He was, he said, ‘very, very uneasy.’ Cerd his anxiety. ore I could understan theref

Kurtz!” broke the stick _ ‘Ah, Mr.d, tainly he fidgeted on his chairagood deal, exclaime of sealing-wax and seemed dumfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to

'$ Jack: Jack Tar; a sailor.

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know ‘how long it would take to’...1 interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too, I was getting savage. ‘How can I tell?’ I said. ‘I haven't even seen the wreck yet—some months, no doubt. All this talk seemed to me so futile. ‘Some months, he said. ‘Well, let us say three months before we can make a

start. Yes. That ought to do the affair. I flung out ofhis hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of verandah) muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot. Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in upon me startlingly with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the ‘affair: “I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station. In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then I saw this station, these men strolling

aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I’ve never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion. “Oh, these months! Well, never mind. Various things happened. One evening a grass shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don’t know what else, burst into a |

blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an aveng- | ing fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled °’ steamer, and saw them all cutting capers in the light, with their arms lifted high,

when the stout man with moustaches came tearing down to the river, a tin pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was ‘behaving splendidly, splendidly, dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail. “T strolled up. There was no hurry. You see the thing had gone off like a box of | matches. It had been hopeless from the very first. The flame had leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up everything —and collapsed. The shed was already a heap | of embers glowing fiercely. A nigger was being beaten near by. They said he had caused the fire in some way; be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly. I saw _ him, later, for several days, sitting in a bit of shade looking very sick and trying to recover himself: afterwards he arose and went out—and the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again. As I approached the glow from the dark I

found aie at the back of two men, talking. | heard the name offKurtz. pro-

it—eh? it is ioeisait ieshe said, and_walked off. Theoe

remained, He was a

first-class agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked little beard and a hooked’ noses He was stand-offish with the other agents;and they on their side said he was the manager’s spy upon them. As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into talk, and by and by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to his room, which was in the main building of the station. He struck

Heart of Darkness, 1

y a match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a silver-mounted dressing-case but also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears, assegais,'° shields, knives was hung up in trophies. The business entrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks—so I had been informed; but there wasn’t a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station, and he had been there — waiting. It seems he could not make bricks without something, I more than a year don’t know what— straw maybe. Anyways, it could not be found there, and as it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps.'’ However, they were all waiting —all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them—for something; and upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation, from the way they took it, though the only thing that ever came to them was disease —as far as I could see. They beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal

as everything else—as the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on that account, — but as to effectually lifting a little finger—oh, no. By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps \ he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick. “T had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there it sud—in fact, pumping denly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was supposed to know there— putting leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica discs—with curiosity— though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldn’t possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was full only of chills, and my head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless prevaricator. At last he got angry, and, to conceal a movement of furious annoyance, he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was sombre—almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torch-light on the face was sinister.

"6 assegais: Javelins.

that God created each 7 An act . . . perhaps: Special creation was the belief, challenged by the evolutionists, species individually. ;

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“Tt arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding an empty half-pint champagne bottle (medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he said Mr.

Kurtz had painted this—in this very station more than a year ago—while waiting for means to go to his trading-post. “Tell me, pray, said I, ‘who is this Mr. Kurtz?’ palthe chidt of the Inner Station, he answered in a short tone, looking away. ‘Much obliged? T said, laughing:“And you are the brickmaker of the Central Station. Everyone knows that. He was silent for a while. “He is a prodigy, he said at last. “He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else. We want, he began to declaim suddenly, ‘for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose. ‘Who says that?’ I asked. ‘Lots of them, he replied. ‘Some even write that; and so he comes here, a special being, as you ought to know. ‘Why ought I to know?’ I interrupted, really surprised. He paid no attention. ‘Yes. To-day he is chief of the best station, next year he will be assistant-manager, two years more and... but | daresay you know what he will be in two years’ time. You are of the new gang— the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also recommended you. Oh, don’t say no. I’ve my own eyes to trust. Light dawned upon me. My dear aunt’s influential acquaintances were producing an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. ‘Do you read the Company’s confidential correspondence?’ I asked. He hadn’t a word to say. It was great fun. ‘When Mr. Kurtz, I continued, severely, ‘is General Manager, you won't have the opportunity. “He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures strolled about listlessly, pouring water on the glow, whence proceeded a sound of hissing; steam ascended in the moonlight, the beaten nigger groaned somewhere. ‘What a row the brute makes!’ said the indefatigable man with the moustaches, appearing near us. ‘Serve him right. Transgression — punishment — bang! Pitiless, pitiless. That’s the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations for the future. I was just telling the manager .. ’ He noticed my companion, and became crestfallen all at once. ‘Not in bed yet, he said, with a kind of servile heartiness; ‘it’s so

natural. Ha! Danger—agitation. He vanished. I went on to the river-side, and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear, ‘Heap of muffs—go to. The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I verily believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one’s very heart —its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there. I felt a hand introducing itself under my arm. ‘My dear sir, said the fellow, ‘I don’t want to be misunderstood, and especially by you, who will see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldn't like him to get a false idea of my disposition. . . “T let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles; and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don’t you see, had been planning to be assistant-manager by and by under the present man, and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had

Heart of Darkness, 1

upset them both not a little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver—over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it, too—God knows! Yet somehow it didn’t bring any image with it—no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy and mutter something about ‘walking on all-fours. If you as much as smiled, he would—though a man of sixty— offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply — which because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretence as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see—you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? Tt seems to meTam trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation ofa dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams. . . .” He was silent for a while. “No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given its subtle and epoch of one’s existence —that which makes its truth, its meaning— penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live as we dream—alone. ...” He paused again as if reflecting, then added—

“Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you know... .” It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another. For a long time already he; sitting apart, had been no more to us than a voice. There was

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not a word from anybody. The others might have been asleep, but I was awake. |listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clue to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river. . Yes—I let him run on,” Marlow began again, “and think what he pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did! And there was nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently about ‘the necessity for every man to get on. ‘And when one comes out here, you conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.’ Mr. Kurtz was a ‘universal genius, but even a genius would find it easier to work with ‘adequate tools— intelligent men.’ He did not make bricks — why, there was a physical impossibility in the way—as I was well aware; and if he did secretarial work for the manager, it was because ‘no sensible man rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors. Did I see it? I saw it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the work—to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast — split! You kicked a loose rivet — cases— piled up — burst at every second step in that station yard on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into the grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping down—and there wasn’t one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a lone negro, letter-bag on shoulder and staff in hand, left our station for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods— ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it, glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers could have brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat. “He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. | said I could see that very well, but what

I wanted was a certain quantity of rivets —and rivets were what really Mr. Kurtz wanted, if he had only known it. Now letters went to the coast every week. . . . ‘My dear sir, he cried, ‘I write from dictation, | demanded rivets. There was

a way — for

an intelligent man. He changed his manner; became very cold, and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus; wondered whether sleeping on board the steamer (I stuck to my salvage night and day) I wasn’t disturbed. There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o’ nights for him. All this energy was wasted, though. ‘That animal has a charmed life, he said; “but you can say this only of brutes in this country. No man—you apprehend me?—no man_here no man here bears a charmed life’ He stood there for a moment in the moonlight with “his délicate ‘hookednosé set a little askew, and his mica eyes glittering without a wink, then, with a curt Good-night, he strode off. I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled, which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days. It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the battered, twisted,

ruined, tin-pot steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an

Heart of Darkness, 1

empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit—to find out what I could do. No, I don’t like _ work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t _ like work—no man does— but I like what is in the work, —the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can =) _ know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means. “I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised—on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This was the foreman —a boiler-maker by trade—a

good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow=facéd man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald-as the palm of my hand; but his hair in and had prospered in the new locality, for falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young children (he had

léft them in charge of a sisterofhis to come out there), and the passion of his life was pigeon-flying. He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons. After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white

serviette’ he brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over his ears. In the evening he could be seen squatted on the bank rinsing that wrapper in the creek with great care, then spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry. “T slapped him on the back and shouted, “We shall have rivets!’ He scrambled to

his feet exclaiming, ‘No! Rivets!’ as though he couldn't believe his ears. Then in a low voice, ‘You... eh?’ I don’t know why we behaved like lunatics. I put my finger to the side of my nose and nodded mysteriously. ‘Good for you!’ he cried, snapped his fingers above his head, lifting one foot. I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck. A frightful clatter came out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the other bank of the creek sent it back in a thundering roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager’s hut, vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself

vanished, too. We stopped, and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed back again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless

in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath in a reasonable tone, ‘why of glitter in the great river. ‘After all, said the boiler-maker sess

18 serviette: A napkin.

eer

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shouldn't we get the rivets?” Why not, indeed! I did not know of any reason why we _ shouldn't. “They'll come in three weeks, I said, confidently.

“But they didn’t. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed-pilgrims.A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels of the donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white

cases, brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station. Five such instalments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness for equitable division. It was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselves but that human folly made look like the spoils of thieving. “This devoted band _called itself the-Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I pea theywere ‘Sworn to: 0secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid bucca-

courage; there was not an atom of (erhaght or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don’t know; but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot. “In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighbourhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long with their heads close together in an everlasting confab. “I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One’s capacity for that kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said Hang! —and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation, and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn’t very interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all and how he would set about his work when there.” 2

“One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices approaching — and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along the bank. I laid my head on my arm again, and had nearly lost myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: ‘I am as harmless as a little child, but I don’t like to be dictated to. Am I the manager—or am I not? I was ordered to send him there. It’s

incredible... . 1 became aware that the two were standing on the shore alongside

the forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I did not move; it did not occur to me to move: I was sleepy. ‘It is unpleasant, grunted the uncle. ‘He has asked the

Administration to be sent there, said the other, ‘with the idea of showing what he

Heart of Darkness, 2

could do; and I was instructed accordingly. Look at the influence that man must

have. Is it not frightful?’ They both agreed it was frightful, then made several bizarre

—_

remarks: ‘Make rain and fine weather-—one man—the Council—by the nose’— bits of absurd sentences that got the better of my drowsiness, so that I had pretty near the whole of my wits about me when the uncle said, ‘The climate may do away with this difficulty for you. Is he alone there?’ ‘Yes; answered the manager; ‘he sent his assistant down the river with a note to me in these terms: “Clear this poor devil out of the country, and don’t bother sending more of that sort. I had rather be alone than have the kind of men you can dispose of with me.” It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine such impudence!’ ‘Anything since then?’ asked the other, hoarsely. ‘Ivory, jerked the nephew; ‘lots of it—prime sort—lots—most annoying, from him. ‘And with that?’ questioned the heavy rumble. ‘Invoice, was the reply fired out, | so to speak. Then silence. They had been talking about Kurtz. “I was broad awake by this time, but, lying perfectly at ease, remained still, having no inducement to change my position. ‘How did that ivory come all this way?’ growled the elder man, who seemed very vexed. The other explained that it had come with a fleet of canoes in charge of an English half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently intended to return himself, the station being by that time bare of goods and stores, but after coming three hundred miles, had suddenly decided to go back, which he started to do alone in a small dugout with four paddlers, leaving the half-caste to continue down the river with the ivory. The two fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempting such a thing. They were at a loss for an adequate motive. As to me, I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone-white-man

fuming hisbacksuddenly on theheadquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home— perhaps? setting his

facetowards the depths of the wilderness, towardshis‘empty and

Perhaps he was just simply a fine fellow station-t-did-netknow-the-motivé. désolate you understand, had not been proname, who stuck to his Work for its own sake. His nounced once. He was ‘that man.’ The half-caste, who, as far as I could see, had con-

-ducted a difficult trip with great prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as ‘that scoundrel? The ‘scoundrel’ had reported that the ‘man’ had been very ill—had recovered imperfectly. ... The two below me moved away then a few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little distance. I heard: “Military post— doctor — two hundred miles—quite alone now—unavoidable delays—nine months—no

s. again, justas‘the manager was saying, They approached — strange rumour news

"No one, asfar as| know, unless a species of wandering trader—a pestilential fellow, snapping ivory from the natives. Who was it they were talking about now? I gathered in snatches that this was some man supposed to be in Kurtz’s district, and of whom

the manager did not approve. ‘We will not be free from unfair competition till one of these fellows is hanged for an example, he said. ‘Certainly, grunted the other; ‘get him hanged! Why not? Anything—anything can be done in this country. That’s what I say; nobody here, you understand, here, can endanger your position. And why? You stand the climate—you outlast them all. The danger is in Europe; but aaa ata ; Fe eam there before I left I took care to I did'my best. fault. my not voices rose again. ‘The extraordinary series of delays is rr

,

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The fat man sighed. ‘Very sad? ‘And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk, continued the other; ‘he bothered me enough when he was here. “Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.” Conceive you— that ass! And he wants to be manager! No, it’s—’ Here he got choked by excessive indignation, and | lifted my head the least bit. I was surprised to see how near they were—right under me. I could have spat upon their hats. They were looking on the ground, absorbed in thought. The manager was switching his leg with a slender twig: his sagacious relative lifted his head. ‘You have been well since you came out this time?’ he asked. The other gave a start. ‘Who? I? Oh! Like a charm—like a charm. But the rest —oh, my goodness! All sick. They die so quick, too, that I haven't the time to send them out of it’s incredible!’ ‘H’m. Just so, grunted the uncle. ‘Ah! my boy, trust to the country— this—I say, trust to this’ I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture that tookin the forest, the creek, the mud, the river, —seemed to beckon witha dis-

to the honouring flourish before the sunlit face of the land a°treackérous~appeal

lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart. It was so startling that I leaped to my feet and looked back at the edge of the forest, as though

cted | [had expe an answer of some sort to that black display of confidence. You know the foolish notions that come to one sometimes. The high stillness confronted these two figures with its ominous patience, waiting for the passing away of a fantastic invasion. “They swore aloud together—out of sheer fright, I believe—then pretending ‘not to know anything of my existence, turned back to the station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without bending a single blade. “In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys weredead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals.

They, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire. I was then rather excited at theprospectofmeeting Kurtz very soon. When I say very soon I mean it comparatively. It was just two months from the day we left the creek when we came to the bank below Kurtz’s station. “Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once—somewhere— far away—in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy

Heart of Darkness, 2

dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a look-out for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day’s steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality—the reality, I tell you — fades. The inner truth is hidden —luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tightropes for—what is it? half-a-crown a tumble a ain to be civil, Marlow,” growled a voice, and I knew there was at least one

listener awake besides myself. “T beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which makes up the rest of the price. And indeed what does the price matter, if the trick be well done? You do your tricks

very well. And I didn’t do badly either, since |managed not to sink that steamboat.on my first trip. Its a wonder to me yet. Imagine a blindfolded man set to drive a van over a bad road. I sweated and shivered over that business considerably, I can tell

you. After all, for a seaman, to scrape the bottom of the thing that’s supposed to float all the time under hiscare is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it, but you never forget thé thump — eh? A blow on the very heart. You remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and think of it—years after—and go hot and cold all over. I don’t pretend to say that steamboat floated all the time. More than once she had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing. We had —in enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows—cannibals And, them. to grateful am I and with, work could one men their place. They were after all, they did not eat each other before my face: they had brought along a provision of hippo-meat which went rotten, and made the mystery of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now. I had the manager on board and three or four pilgrims with their staves—all complete. Sometimes we came upon a station close by the bank, clinging to the skirts of the unknown, and the white men rushing out of a tumble-down hovel, with great gestures of joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very strange —had the appearance of being held there captive by a spell. The word ivory would ring in the air for a while—and on we went again into the silence, along empty reaches, round the still bends, between the high walls of our winding way, reverberating in hollow claps the ponderous beat of the stern-wheel. Trees, trees,

millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on —which was just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims

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imagined it crawled to I don’t know. To some place where they expected to get some_ thing, I bet! For me it crawled towards Kurtz—exclusively; but when the steampipes started leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees wouldrunup | ( the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, | till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell., | The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, | their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanthe aspect of an unknown planet.; aorderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells,awhirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, | of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and ' motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and _ incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember, because we were travelling

in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign —and no memories. “The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there— there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. Itwas unearthly, and the men were No, they were not inhuman, Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours— the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that

there was iin you Justthe faintest trace of arésponse-to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages —could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything — because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage—who can tell?— but truth—truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder —the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a

man as these on his own inborn rags that would An appeal to me

the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff—with strength. Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags— fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. in this fiendish row—is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have

a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe. Who’s that

Heart of Darkness, 2

grunting? You wonder I didn’t go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no —I didn’t. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woollen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes—I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity—and he had filed teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he knew was this—that should the water in that transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he sweated and fired up and watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu charm, made of rags, tied to his arm, and a piece of polished bone, as big as a watch, stuck flat-ways through his lower lip), while the wooded banks slipped past us slowly, the short noise was left behind, the interminable miles of silence—and we crept on, towards

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Kurtz. But the snags were thick, the water was treacherous and shallow, the boiler

seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that fireman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.

“Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds, an inclined and melancholy pole, with the unrecognizable tatters of what had been a flag of some sort flying from it, and a neatly stacked wood-pile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank, and on the stack of firewood found a flat piece of

board with some faded pencil-writing on it. When deciphered it said: “Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously. There was a signature, but it was illegible—not Kurtz—a much longer word. ‘Hurry up’ Where? Up the river? ‘Approach cautiously? We had not done so. But the warning could not have been meant for the place where it could be only found after approach. Something was wrong above. But what—and how much? That was the question. We commented adversely upon the imbecility of that telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing, and would not let us look very far, either. A torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway of the hut, and flapped sadly in our faces. The dwelling was dismantled; but we could see a white man had lived there not very long ago. There remained a rude table—a plank up on two posts; a heap of rubbish reposed in a dark corner, and by the door I picked of state a into thumbed been had pages the and a book. It had lost its covers, white with afresh stitched lovingly been had back the extremely dirty softness; but was, An cotton thread, which looked clean yet. It was an extraordinary find. Its title such Towson—some Towser, man a by Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship, enough, reading dreary looked matter The name—Master in his Majesty’s Navy.

9ALLO,

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with illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures, and the copy was sixty years old. I handled this amazing antiquity with the greatest possible tenderness, lest it should dissolve in my hands. Within, Towson or Towser was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of ships’ chains and tackle, and other such matters. Not a

very enthralling book; but at the first glance you could see there a singleness of intention, an honest concern for the right way of going to work, which made these humble pages, thought out so many years ago, luminous with another than a professional light. The simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases,” made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real. Such a book being there was wonderful enough; but still more astounding were the notes pencilled in the margin, and plainly referring to the text. I couldn’t believe my eyes! They were in cipher! Yes, it looked like cipher. Fancy a man lugging with him a book of that description into this nowhere and studying it—and making notes—in cipher at that! It was an extravagant mystery. “T had been dimly aware for some time of a worrying noise, and when I lifted my eyes I saw the wood-pile was gone, and the manager, aided by all the pilgrims, was shouting at me from the river-side. I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship. “I started the lame engine ahead. ‘It must be this miserable trader—this intruder, exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently at the place we had left. ‘He must be English, I said. ‘It will not save him from getting into trouble if he is not careful; muttered the manager darkly. I observed — assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world.

i

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“The current was more rapid now, the steamer facta at her last gasp, the stern-wheel flopped languidly, and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I expected the wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like watching the last flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a tree a little way ahead to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on one thing was too much for human patience. The manager displayed a beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with myself whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me

that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. Theessentials of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling. “Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight miles from Kurtz’s station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked grave, and told me the navigation up there was so dangerous that it would be advisable, the sun being very low already, to wait where we were till next morning. Moreover, he

pointed out that if the warning to approach cautiously were to be followed, we must

"° purchases: Tackles or levers or similar mechanical devices.

Heart of Darkness, 2

| _ | | '

approach in daylight —not at dusk, or in the dark. This was sensible enough. Eight miles meant nearly three hours’ steaming for us, and I could also see suspicious ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, Iwas annoyed beyond expression at the delay, and most unreasonably, too, since one night more could not matter much after so many months. As we had plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought up in the middle of the stream. The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides like a railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep —it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being deaf—then the night came suddenly, and struck you blind as well. About three in the morning some large fish leaped, and the loud splash made me jump as though a gun had been fired. When the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just there, standing all round you like something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps, it lifted” as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the towering multitude of trees, of the immense matted jungle, with the blazing little ball of the sun hanging over it—all perfectly still—and then the white shutter came down again, smoothly, as if sliding in greased grooves. I ordered the chain, which we had begun to heave in, to be paid

out again. Before it stopped running with a muffled rattle, a cry, a very loud cry, asof A complaining clam=_ nfrrite desolation, soared slowly in the opaque air. It ceased. unexpectedness-of it sheer The our-ears.. filled our, modulated in savage discords,

to me it cap. T'don’t know how it struck the others: made-my-hair-stir-under-my alll from apparently and suddenly, so screamed, had itself “seemed as though the mist aj in culminated It arise. uproar mournful and sides at once, did this tumultuous short, stopped which shrieking, excessive hurried outbreak of almost intolerably leaving us stiffened in a variety of silly attitudes, and obstinately listening to the | nearly as appalling and excessive silence. “Good God! What is the meaning and| hair sandy with man, fat little —a pilgrims, stammered at my elbow one of the red whiskers, who wore side-spring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his socks. ' Two others remained open-mouthed a whole minute, then dashed into the little cabin, to rush out incontinently and stand darting scared glances, with Winchesters

at ‘ready’ in their hands. What we could see was just the steamer we were on, her out- |

lines blurred as though she had been on the point of dissolving, and a misty strip of | water, perhaps two feet broad, around her—and that was all. The rest of the world |

disap- i was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were concerned. Just nowhere. Gone,

peared; swept off without leaving a whisper or a shadow behind. “T went forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to be ready to trip the anchor and move the steamboat at once if necessary. ‘Will they attack?’ whisThe pered an awed voice. “We will be all butchered in this fog? murmured another. It wink. to forgot eyes the slightly, faces twitched with the strain, the hands trembled black the of and men white the of ns was very curious to see the contrast of expressio the river as we, fellows of our crew, who were as much strangers to that part of

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though their homes were only eight hundred miles away. The whites, of course greatly discomposed, had besides a curious look of being painfully shocked by such an outrageous row. The others had an alert, naturally interested expression; but their faces were essentially quiet, even those of the one or two who grinned as they hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting phrases, which seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their headman, a young, broad-chested black, severely draped iin dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrilsand his hair all done up-artfully in oily ringlets, stood near me. ‘Aha!’ I said, just for good fellowship’s sake. ‘Catch im, he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth “Catch ’im. Give ’im to us. “To you, eh?’ I asked; ‘what would you do with theni?“Eat*iml.he-said; Curtly, and, leaning his elbow on the rail, looked out into the

fog in a dignified and profoundly pensive attitude. I would no doubt have been properly horrified, had it not occurred to me that he and his chaps must be very hungry: that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at least this month past. They had been engaged for six months (I don’t think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time—had no inherited experience to teach them as it were), and of course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accor-

dance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it didn’t enter anybody’s head to trouble how they would live. Certainly they had brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn't have lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn't, in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard. It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate self-defence. You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence. Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nineinches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currencyin river-side villages. You can see how that worked. There were either no villages,or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins, with an. occasional old

he-goat thrown iin, didn’t want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with, I don’t see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and honourable trading company. For the rest, the only thing to eat— though it didn’t look eatable in the least—I saw in their possession was a few lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender colour, they kept wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but so small that it seemed done more for the looks of the thing than for any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they

didn’t go for us—they were thirty to five—and have a good tuck-in” for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that

2° tuck-in: A hearty meal.

Heart of Darkness, 2

something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest— not because it occurred to me I might be eaten by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I perceived— in a new light, as it were—how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so—what shall I say? —so—unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that time. Perhaps I had a little fever, too. One can’t live with one’s finger everlastingly on one’s pulse. I had often ‘a little fever, or a little touch of other things—the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course. Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity. Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear—or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It’s really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one’s soul—than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me—the fact dazzling, to be seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an — when I thought of it— than the curious, unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamour that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind whiteness of the fog. “Two pilgrims were quarrelling in hurried whispers as to which bank. ‘Left.’ "No, no; how can you? Right, right, of course. ‘It is very serious, said the manager's voice behind me; ‘I would be desolated if anything should happen to Mr. Kurtz before we came up. I looked at him, and had not the slightest doubt he was sincere. He was just the kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances. That was his restraint. But when he muttered something about going on at once, I did not even take the trouble to answer him. I knew, and he knew, that it was impossible. Were we to let go

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our hold of the bottom, we would be absolutely in the air—in space. We wouldn't be|

able to tell where we were going to— whether up or down stream, or across— tillwe’ fetched against one bank or the other, —and then we wouldn’t know at first which it was. Of course I made no move. I had no mind for a smash-up. You couldn't imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck. Whether drowned at once or not, we were sure\ to perish speedily in one way or another. ‘I authorize you to take all the risks, he said, \ he | after a short silence. ‘I refuse to take any, I said, shortly; which was just the answer judgyour to defer must I expected, though its tone might have surprised him. ‘Well, him ment. You are captain, he said, with marked civility. I turned my shoulder to was It last? it would in sign of my appreciation, and looked into the fog. How long the in ivory for the most hopeless look-out. The approach to this Kurtz grubbing

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wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle. ‘Will they attack, do you think?’ asked the manager, in a confidential tone. “I did not think they would attack, for several obvious reasons. The thick fog was one. If they left the bank in their canoes they would get lost in it, as we would be if we attempted to move. Still, I had also judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable—and yet eyes were in it, eyes that had seen us. The river-side bushes were certainly very thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the reach—certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise — of the cries we had heard. They had not the fierce character boding immediate hostile intention. Unexpected, wild, and violent as they had been, they had given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the | steamboat had for some reason filled those savages with unrestrained grief. The danger, if any, I expounded, was from our proximity to a great human passion let loose. / Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy... “You should ee seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin, or even to revile me: but I believe they thought me gone mad— with fright, maybe. I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys, it was no good bothering. Keep a look-out? Well, you may guess I watched the fog for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it, too—choking, warm, stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being aggressive — it was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its essence was purely protective. “It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted, and its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a half below Kurtz’s station. We had just floundered and flopped round a bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in the middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we opened the reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sandbank, or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of the river. They were discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot was seen just under the water, exactly as a man’s backbone is seen running down the middle of his back under the skin. Now, as far as I did see, I could go to the right or to the left of this. I didn’t know either channel, of course. The banks looked pretty well alike, the depth appeared the same; but as I had been informed the station was on the west side, I naturally headed for the western passage. “No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower

than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks. The twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a large limb of some tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then well on in the afternoon, the face of the forest was gloomy, and a broad strip of shadow

Heart of Darkness, 2

had already fallen on the water. In this shadow we steamed up—very slowly, as you may imagine. I sheered her well inshore —the water being deepest near the bank, as the sounding-pole informed me. “One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just below me. This steamboat was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck, there were two little teak-wood houses, with doors and windows. The boiler was in the fore-end, and the

machinery right astern. Over the whole there was a light roof, supported on stanchions. The funnel projected through that roof, and in front of the funnel a small cabin built of light planks served for a pilot-house. It contained a couch, two campstools, a loaded Martini-Henry”' leaning in one corner, a tiny table, and the steeringwheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad shutter at each side. All these were always thrown open, of course. I spent my days perched up there on the extreme fore-end of that roof, before the door. At night I slept, or tried to, on the couch. An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe, and educated by my poor predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings, wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought all the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a minute. “T was looking down at the sounding-pole, and feeling much annoyed to see at each try a little more of it stick out of that river, when I saw my poleman give up the business suddenly, and stretch himself flat on the deck, without even taking the

trouble to haul his pole in. He kept hold on it though, and it trailed in the water. At the same time the fireman, whom

I could also see below me, sat down abruptly

before his furnace and ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I had to look at the river mighty quick, because there was a snag in the fairway. Sticks, little sticks, were flying about— thick: they were whizzing before my nose, dropping below me, striking behind me against my pilot-house. All this time the river, the shore, the woods, were

very quiet—perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of the stern-wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag clumsily. Arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at! I stepped in quickly to close the shutter on the landside. That fool-helmsman,

his hands on the spokes, was lifting his knees high,

stamping his feet, champing his mouth, like a reined-in horse. Confound him! And we were staggering within ten feet of the bank. I had to lean right out to swing the heavy shutter, and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own, looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil had been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes, —the bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening, of bronze colour. The twigs shook, swayed, and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, his and then the shutter came to. ‘Steer her straight) I said to the helmsman. He held his down setting and lifting on head rigid, face forward; but his eyes rolled, he kept as well feet gently, his mouth foamed a little. Keep quiet!’ I said in a fury. I might just

21 Martini-Henry: A powerful rifle.

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have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind. I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle of feet on the iron deck; confused exclamations; a voice screamed, ‘Can you turn back?’ I caught sight of a V-shaped ripple on the water ahead. What? Another snag! A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush. A deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward. I swore at it. Now I couldn’t see the ripple or the snag either. I stood in the doorway, peering, and the arrows came in swarms. They might have been poisoned, but they looked as though-they wotldn't killa cat. The bush began to howl. Our wood-cutters raised a warlike whoop; the report of a rifle just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the pilot-house was yet full of noise and smoke when I made a dash at the wheel. The fool-nigger had dropped everything, to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry. He stood before the wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at him to come back, while |

straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat. There was no room to turn even if I had wanted to, the snag was somewhere very near ahead in that confounded smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just crowded her into the bank—right into the

bank, where I knew the water was deep. “We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short, as I had foreseen it would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head back to a glinting whizz that traversed the pilothouse, in at one shutter-hole and out at the other. Looking past that mad helmsman,

who was shaking the empty rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men running bent double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent. Something big appeared in the air before the shutter, the rifle went overboard, and the man | stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder in an extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The side of his head hit the wheel twice, and

the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp-stool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away, we were clear of the snag, and looking ahead I could see that in another hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank; but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at

; i

| | | | | |

me; both his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that, either thrown

or lunged through the opening, had caught him in the side just below the ribs; the é blade had gone in out of sight, after making a frightful gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing lustre. The fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something precious, with an air of being afraid I would try to take | it away from him. I had to make an effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand I felt above my head for the line of the steam whistle, and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from the depths of the woods went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair as may be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was a great commotion in the. bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang out sharply—then |

Heart of Darkness, 2

silence, in which the languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard a-starboard at the moment when the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, very hot and agitated, appeared in the doorway. ‘The manager sends me he began in an official tone, and stopped short. ‘Good God! he said, glaring at the wounded man. “We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put to us some question in an understandable language; but he died without uttering a sound, without moving | a limb, without twitching a muscle. Only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we could not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he | frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black death-mask an inconceivably sombre, brooding, and menacing expression. The lustre of inquiring glance faded swiftly | into vacant glassiness. ‘Can you steer?’ I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once I meant him to steer whether or no. To tell you the truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. ‘He is dead? murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. “No doubt about it) said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces. ‘And by the way, I suppose Mr. Kurtz is ——S dead as well by this time.’ _ “For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of extreme , disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving after something alto_ gether without a substance. I couldn’t have been more disgusted if I had travelled all , this way for the sole purpose of talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with . . . I flung one shoe overboard, and became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking _ forward to—a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I had never imag- ined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn’t say to myself, ‘Now I will | ~ never see him) or ‘Now I will never shake him by the hand, but, ‘now I will never

|hear him? The man presented himself as a voice. Not of course that I did not connect | him with some sort of action. Hadn’t I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all

the other agents together? That was not the point. The point was in his being a gifted ‘creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out preéminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words—the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible,

the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness. “The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I thought, By Jove! of it’s all over. We are too late; he has vanished—the gift has vanished, by means sormy —and some spear, arrow, or club. I will never hear that chap speak after all, in the howlrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, even such as I had noticed

ing sorrow of these savages in the bush. I couldn’t have felt more of lonely desolation

a forhad missed my destiny in life. ... Why do belie Ibeen robbed of mehow, had

. mustn’t a Good Lord! rouisigiaathis beastly way, somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd Here, give me some tobacco.” . . . man ever and Marlow’s lean There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, d droppe eyelids, with an face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and s draws at his pipe, it aspect of concentrated attention; and as he took vigorou

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seemed to retreat and advance out of the night in the regular flicker of the tiny flame. The match went out. “Absurd!” he cried. “This is the worst of trying to tell... . Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites, and temperature normal— you hear —normal from year’s end to year’s end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be— exploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes! Now I think of it, it 1s amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my fortitude. I was cut

to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He was very little more than a voice. And I heard—him—it—this voice—other voices—all of them were so little more than voices—and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense. Voices, voices — even the girl herself—now He was silent for a long time. “T laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie,” he began, suddenly. “Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it— completely. They — the women I mean — are out of it—should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying, ‘My Intended’ You would have perceived directly then how completely she was out of if. “And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this——ah— specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball—an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and—1lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and

sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country. “Mostly fossil, the manager had remarked, disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these niggers do bury the tusks sometimes— but evidently they couldn’t bury this parcel deep enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We filled the steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the

deck. Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this favour had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him say, ‘My ivory. Oh, yes, I heard him. ‘My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible— it was not good for one either —trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst

Heart of Darkness, 2

the devils of the land—I mean literally. You can’t understand. How could you?— with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums — how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude without a policeman—by the way of silence—utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong— too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil: the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil—I don’t know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won't pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove! —breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don’t you see? your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in—your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business. And that’s difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain—I am try-'\ ing to account to myself for— for— Mr. Kurtz—for the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This\ | initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confi- ©

theInternational Society for the and by and by I learned that, mostappropriately,

He began with the ever, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous.

tromnsthivpeintbbdevelopmint aha argument that guiitoths them [savages]in thenature “of “supernatural beings—

necessarily

appear

we

asof a deity, and so on, and so on. ‘By the simple approach them with the might etc. ete.

ded, our will we can exert a power for good practically unboun exerci magnificent, ‘was tion perora —From that point he soared and took me with him. The Immenexotic an of notion though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the was This iasm. enthus with sity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle

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the unbounded power of eloquence—of words—of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the endof that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like’a flash of lightning in a serene sky: ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’ The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me to

take good care of ‘my pamphlet’ (he called it), as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career. I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as it turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I’ve done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But then, you see, I can’t choose. He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can’t forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late —I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilothelmsman awfully, house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don’t you see, he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back—a help—an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me—I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory— like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment. “Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone. He had no restraint, no

restraint —just like Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers, I dragged him out, after first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess I performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the little door-step; his shoulders were pressed to my breast; I hugged him from behind desperately. Oh! he was heavy, heavy; heavier than any man on earth, I should imagine. Then without more ado I tipped him overboard. The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of grass, and I saw the body roll over twice before I lost sight of it for ever. All the pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on the awning-deck about the pilot-house, chattering at each other like a flock of excited magpies, and there was a scandalized murmur at my heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body hanging about for I can’t guess. Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard another, and a very ominous, murmur on

the deck below. My friends the wood-cutters were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reason — though I admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the

5

Heart of Darkness, 2

fishes alone should have him. He had been a very second-rate helmsman while alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first-class temptation, and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business. “This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going half-speed, keeping right in the middle of the stream, and | listened to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz, they had given up the station; Kurtz was dead, and the station had been burnt—and so on—and so on. The red-haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that at least this poor Kurtz had been properly avenged. ‘Say! We must have made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? What do you think?

Say?’ He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery”’ beggar. And he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man! I could not help saying, “You made a glorious lot of smoke, anyhow. I had seen, from the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew, that almost all the shots had gone too high. You can’t hit anything unless you take aim and fire from the shoulder; but these chaps fired from the hip with | maintained—and I was right— was caused by the their eyes shut. The retreat,

screeching of the steam-whistle. me'with indignant protests.

Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and began to howat ci

Eeeerieiics

ofl cine

Sener toe

“The manager stood by the wheel murmuring confidentially about the necessity of getting well away down the river before dark at all events, when I saw in the distance a clearing on the river-side and the outlines of some sort of building. “What's this? I asked. He clapped his hands in wonder. ‘The station!’ he cried. I edged in at once, still going half-speed. “Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill interspersed with rare trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. A long decaying building on the summit was half buried in the high grass; the large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the woods made a background. There was no enclosure or fence of any

kind; but there had been one apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls. The rails, or whatever there had been between, had disappeared. on the waterOf course the forest surrounded all that. The river-bank was clear, and

his side I saw a white man under a hat like a cart-wheel beckoning persistently with I certain almost was I below, and the edge of the forest above whole arm. Examining | prupast steamed I there. and here could see riovéments— human forms gliding | began shore the on man The down. dently, then stopped the engines and let her drift manager. ‘I | to shout, urging us to land. “We have been attacked, screamed the ‘Come please. you as cheerful as know—I know. It’s all right} yelled back the other, along. It’s all right. I am glad ng funny I had “His aspect reminded me of something I had seen—somethi ‘What does myself, asking was I de, seen somewhere. As I manceuvred to get alongsi had clothes His in. harlequ a like this fellow look like?” Suddenly I got it. He looked

it was covered with been made of some stuff that was brown holland”? probably, but 22 singery: Redheaded. 23 holland: Unbleached cotton or linen.

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patches all over, with bright patches, blue, red, and yellow— patches on the back, patches on the front, patches on elbows, on knees; coloured binding around his

jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a wind-swept plain. ‘Look out, captain!’ he cried; ‘there’s a snag lodged in here last night? What! Another snag? I confess I swore shamefully. I had nearly holed my cripple, to finish off that charming trip. The harlequin on the bank turned his little pug-nose up to me. “You English?’ he asked, all smiles. Are you?’ I shouted from the wheel. The smiles vanished, and he shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment. Then he brightened up. “Never mind!’ he cried, encouragingly. ‘Are we in time?’ I asked. ‘He is up there, he replied, with a toss of the head up the hill, and becoming gloomy all of a sudden. His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next. “When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the teeth, had gone to the house this chap came on board. ‘I say, I don’t like this. These natives are in the bush, I said. He assured me earnestly it was all right. “They are simple people, he added; ‘well, Iam glad you came. It took me all my time to keep them off. ‘But you said it was all right, I cried. ‘Oh, they meant no harm, he said; and as I stared he corrected himself, ‘Not exactly’ Then vivaciously, “My faith, your pilothouse wants a clean-up!’ In the next breath he advised me to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the whistle in case of any trouble. ‘One good screech will do more \ for you than all your rifles. They are simple people, he repeated. He rattled away at 1)| such a rate he quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of | silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that such was the case. ‘Don’t you talk with

Mr. Kurtz?’ I said. “You don’t talk with that man—you listen to him, he exclaimed | with severe exaltation. ‘But now ’ He waved his arm, and in the twinkling of | an eye was in the uttermost depths of despondency. In a moment he came up again | with a jump, possessed himself of both my hands, shook them continuously, while he gabbled: “Brother sailor... honour... pleasure... delight... introduce myself... Russian ...son of an arch-priest... Government of Tambov... What? Tobacco! English tobacco; the excellent English tobacco! Now, that’s brotherly. Smoke? Where’s a sailor that does not smoke?’ “The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out he had run away from school, had gone to sea in a Russian ship; ran away again; served some time in English ships; was now reconciled with the arch-priest. He made a point of that. ‘But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind. ‘Here!’ I interrupted. “You can never tell! Here I met Mr. Kurtz, he said, youthfully solemn

and reproachful. 1 held my tongue after that. It appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading-house on the coast to fit him out with stores and goods, and had started for the interior with a light heart, and no more idea of what would happen to him than a baby. He had been wandering about that river for nearly two years alone, cut off from everybody and everything. ‘I am not so young as I look. I am twenty-five, he said. ‘At first old Van Shuyten would tell me to go to the devil, he narrated with keen

Heart of Darkness, 3

enjoyment; ‘but I stuck to him, and talked and talked, till at last he got afraid I would talk the hind-leg off his favourite dog, so he gave me some cheap things and a few guns, and told me he hoped he would never see my face again. Good old Dutchman, Van Shuyten. I’ve sent him one small lot of ivory a year ago, so that he can’t call mea little thief when I get back. I hope he got it. And for the rest I don’t care. I had some wood stacked for you. That was my old house. Did you see?’ sat

——“T gave himTowson’s book. He made asthough he would kiss me, but restrained himself. ‘The only book I had left, and I thought I had lost it; he said, looking at it ecstatically. “So many accidents happen to a man going about alone, you know. Canoes get upset sometimes—and sometimes you've got to clear out so quick when the people get angry. He thumbed the pages. ‘You made notes in Russian?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘I thought they were written in cipher, I said. He laughed, then became serious. ‘I had lots of trouble to keep these people off, he said. “Did they want to kill you?’ I asked. ‘Oh, no!’ he cried, and checked himself. ‘Why did they attack us?’ I pur-, sued. He hesitated, then said shamefacedly, ‘They don’t want him to go.’ “Don’t they?’ I said, curiously. He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom. ‘I tell you, he cried, \‘this man has enlarged my mind.’ He opened his arms wide, staring at me with his | little blue eyes that were perfectly round.”

33 “T looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in motley, as though

he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain —why he did not instantly disappear. ‘I went

a little farther, he said, ‘then still a little farther—till I had gone so far that |don't know how I’ll ever get back. Never mind. Plenty time: T canmanage. You take Kurtz tell you.’ Theglamour of youth enveloped his particoloured away quick— quick—I rags, his destitution, his [oneliness, the essential desolation of his futile wanderings.

for years—his life hadn’t been worth a day’s purchase; and there he For months— was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all appearance indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into something like admiration —like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him unscathed. He on ptish surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and-to

move onwards atthe greatest possible risk, and to, need wasto exist Hish. ‘throug privation. [f the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical mum and with amaxiOf

had ever ruléd a human being, it ruled this be-patched youth. I spirit of adventure It seemed to have almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame. talking to you, was he while consumed all thought of self so completely, that even through these gone had you forgot that it was he —the man before your eyes—who over meditated not had He things. I did not envy him his devotion to Kurtz, though. that say must I fatalism. eager +t. It came to him, and he accepted it with a sort of upon come had he way to me it appeared about the most dangerous thing in every so far.

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“They had come together unavoidably, like two ships becalmed near each other, and lay rubbing sides at last. I suppose Kurtz wanted an audience, because on a certain occasion, when encamped in the forest, they had talked all might, or more probably Kurtz had talked. ‘We talked of everything, -he-said, quite transported at the recollection. ‘I forgot there was such a thing as sleep. The night did not seemrto last an hour. Everything! Everything!... Of love too. ‘Ah, he talked to you of love!” I ‘said, much amused. ‘It isn’t what you think, he cried, almost passionately. ‘It was in general. He made me see things— things.’ “He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time, and the headman of my wood-cutters, lounging near by, turned upon him his heavy and glittering eyes. I looked around, and I don’t know why, but I assure you that never, never before, did

this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness. ‘And, ever since, you have been with him, of course?’ | said.

“On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had been very much broken by various causes. He had, as he_informed me proudly, managed to nurse Kurtz through two illnesses (he alluded to it as you would to some risky feat), but as a rule Kurtz wandered alone, far in the depths of the forest. “Very often coming to this station, I had to wait days and days before he would turn up, he said. ‘Ah, it was worth waiting for! —sometimes. ‘What was he doing? exploring or what?’ I asked. ‘Oh, yes, of course’; he had discovered lots of villages, a lake, too —he did not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous t@ inquire too much— but mostly his expeditions had been for ivory. ‘But he had no goods to trade with by that time, I objected. ‘There’s a good lot of cartridges left even yet; he answered, looking away. “To speak plainly,heraided the country, I said. He nodded. ‘Not alone, surely!’ He muttered something about the villages round that lake. ‘Kurtz got the tribe to follow him, did he?’ I suggested. He fidgeted a little. “They adored him, he said. The tone of these words was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled eagerness and reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his emotions. ‘What can you expect?’ he burst out; She came to them with thunder and lightning, you know—and they had never seen anything like it —and very terrible. He could be very terrible. You can’t judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now—just to give you an idea—I don’t mind telling you, he wantéd"to shoot me, too, one day—but I don’t judge him? ‘Shoot you! I cried. ‘What for?’ “Well, Thad'@smathotf ivory the chief of that village near

my house gave me. You see I used to shoot game for them. Well, he wanted it, and wouldn’t hear reason. He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him theiivory and thei cleared out of the country, because-he could do so, and hada fancy for it, _and_there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing-whom he jolly well pleased. And it was true, too. I gave him theivory. What did I care! But I didn’t clear out. No, no. I couldn’t leave him. I had to be careful, of course, till We got friendly aagain for a time. He had his second illness then. Afterwards I had to keep out of the way; but I didn’t mind. He was living for the most part in those villages on the lake. When he came down to the river, sometimes he would take to me, and sometimes itwas better

for me to be careful’This man suffered too mitich. He hated allthis,and somehow he

Heart of Darkness, 3

couldn't get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was “time;I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then he would remain; go off on another ivory hunt; disappear for weeks; forget himself amongst

these _people—forget himself—you know’ ‘Why! he’s mad, T said: He protested indignantly-Mr. Kurtz couldmtbe mad. If I had heard him talk, only two days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at such a thing. . . . |had taken up my binoculars while we talked, and was looking at the shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and at the back of the house. The consciousness of there being people in that bush,-so silent, so

quiet —as silent and quiet as the ruined house on thehill—made me uneasy. There

wasno sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to me in desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask— heavy, like the closed door of a prison— they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The Russian was explaining

to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river, bringing

men of that lake tribe. He had-been absent for several= along with him all the fighting . a te or I swppose—and had come down unexpectedly, adored, himself months¢etting withthe intention to all appearance of making a raid either across the river or down — what shall I stream. Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of the

See

However he had got much worse suddenly. ‘I heard say? —less material aspirations.

he was lying helpless, and so I came up —took my chance, said|the Russian. ‘Oh, he

is bad, very bad?-tdirected my glass to the house. There were no signs of life, but there was the ruined roof, the long mud wall peeping above the grass, with three little square window-holes, no two of the same size; all this brought within reach of my hand, as it were. And then I made a brusque movement, and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer a blow. view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before

Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake. These. puzzling, round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and had been there if vultures for also and thought for — food ‘striking and disturbing ous industri were as ants such for events all at but sky; ‘any looking down from the heads those e, impressiv more even been have would enough to ascend the pole. They Only one, the first I had on thestakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house.

The start back made out, was facing My way. T'was not so shocked as you may think. d to see a expecte had I . surprise of nt moveme a but I had given was really nothing I returned deliberatelyto the first |had seen— and ei

knob of wood there, you know.

—a head that seemed to sleep there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids,

g a narrow white line of | at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showin endless and jocose dream the teeth, was smiling, too, smiling continuously at some

a

——

er said afterwards that am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manag ~=~—«f no opinion on that point, but I Mr. Kurtz’s methods had ruined the district. I have

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heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him—some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnifi1think the cent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can’t say. had found wilderness the But last. knowledge came to him at last—only at the very him out early, and had taken on hima

terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I

think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude—and the whisper had proved reat fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he washollow at the core. ... Iput down the glass, and the head that had appeared near enough to be spoken tosocal at once to have leaped away from me into inaccessible distance. “The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried, indistinct voice he began to assure me he had not dared to take these— say, symbols — down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendancy was extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl. . . . ‘I don’t want to know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz, I shouted. Curious, this feeling that came over me that such details would be more intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz’s windows. After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had a right to exist — obviously — in the sunshine. The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn’t heard any of these splendid monologues on, what was it? on love, justice, conduct of life—or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of rebels.I shocked him exces-

sively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers—and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks. “You don’t know how such a life tries.a man_like Kurtz, cried Kurtz’s last disciple. “Well, and you?’ I said. ‘I! I! lama simple man. Ihave no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How can you compare me to... ?’ His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke down. ‘I don’t tilkeane he groaned. ‘I’ve been doing my best to keep him alive, and that’s enough. I had no hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn’t been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I—I— haven't slept for the last ten nights ..’ “His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of the forest had slipped downhill while we talked, had gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in the gloom, while we down there were yet in the sunshine, and the stretch of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and dazzling splendour, with a murky and overshadowed bend above and below. Not a living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle.

Heart of Darkness, 3

“Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared, as though they had come up from the ground. They waded waist-deep in the grass, in a compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their midst. Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp arrow flying straight to the very heart of the land; and, as if by enchantment, streams of human beings— of naked human beings—with spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, were poured into the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest. The bushes shook, the grass swayed for a time, and then everything stood still in attentive immobility. “Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for, said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had stopped, too, halfway to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on the stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above the shoulders of the bearers. “Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love in general will find some particular reason to spare us this time, I said. I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation, as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been a dishonouring necessity. I could not hear a sound, but through my glasses I saw the thin arm extended commandingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head that — Kurtz— that means short in German—don't nodded with grotesque jerks. Kurtz

else inhislife—and death. He looked at it? Well, the name was as true as everything His covering had-fatten off,and his body emerged from it pitiful least seven feet long.

and appalling as from a winding-sheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image ofdeath carved out of

crowd ofmen old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless

made of darkand

glittering bronze-Tsaw him open hismouth-wide “it gave him a

weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the

earth, all the men before him. A deep voice reached me faintly. He must have been forshouting. He fell back suddenly. The stretcher shook as the bearers staggered vanward again, and almost at the same time I noticed that the crowd of savages was ishing without any perceptible movement of retreat, as if the forest that had ejected in a long these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn aspiration. shot-guns, a “Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms—two e thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter. —the heavy rifle, and a light revolver-carbin head. They laid him The manager bent over him murmuring as he walked beside his and a camp-stool or down in one of the little cabins—just a room for a bedplace , and a lot of torn two, you know. We had brought his belated correspondence feebly amongst these envelopes and open letters littered his bed. His hand roamed ed languor of his exprespapers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes and the compos

not seem in pain. This sion. Itwas not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did it had had its fill of all “Shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for the moment the emotions. in my face said, ‘I am glad. ~“€fFe Fustled one of the letters, and looking straight special recommendations were Somebody had been writing to him about me. These effort, almost without the turning up again. The volume of tone he emitted without

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trouble of moving his lips, amazed me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in him—factitious no doubt—to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall heardirectly. “The manager appeared silently in the doorway; I stepped out at once and he drew the curtain after me. The Russian, eyed curiously by the pilgrims, was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his glance. “Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance, flitting indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest, and near the river two bronze figures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight under fantastic head-dresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in statuesque repose. And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman. “She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wildeyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul. “She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell

to the water’s edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding

over an inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured at my back. She looked at us all as if her life had depended upon the unswerving steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky, and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene. “She turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into the bushes to the left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of the thickets before she disappeared. “Tf she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to shoot her, said the man of patches, nervously. ‘I have been risking my life every day for the last fortnight to keep her out of the house. She got in one day and kicked up a row about those miserable rags I picked up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with. I wasn’t decent. At least it must have been that, for She talked like a fury to Kurtz eae

-

Heart ofDarkness, 3

for an hour, pointing at me now and then. I don’t understand the dialect of this tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or there would have been mischief. I don't understand. ...

No— it’s too much for me. Ah, well, it’s all

over now. “At this moment I heard Kurtz’s deep voice behind the curtain: “Save me! —save the ivory, you mean. Don’t tell me. Save me! Why, I’ve had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you would like to believe. Never mind. I'll carry my ideas out yet—I will return. Pll show you what can be done. You with your little peddling notions — you are interfering with me. I will return. I... “The manager came out. He did me the honour to take me under the arm and lead me aside. ‘He is very low, very low, he said. He considered it necessary to sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. ‘We have done all we could for him—

haven't we? But there is no disguising the fact, Mr. Kurtz has done more harm than

to theCompany. He didnot see the time was not ripe for vigorous action. Cau-_ “good tiously, cautiously—that’s my principle. We must be cautious yet. The district is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon the whole, the trade will suffer. I don’t deny there is a remarkable quantity of ivory—mostly fossil. We must save it, at all

— but look how precarious the position is—and why? Because the method is events unsound. ‘Do you, said I, looking at the shore, ‘call it “unsound method”?' ‘Without doubt, he exclaimed, hotly. ‘Don’t you?’ . . . ‘No method at all; | murmured after a while. ‘Exactly, he exulted. ‘I anticipated this. Shows a complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter. ‘Oh, said I, ‘that fellow— what's his name?—the brickmaker, will make a readable report for you. He appeared con-

founded for a moment. It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile,

and I turned mentally to Kurtz for relief— positively for relief. ‘Nevertheless I think

on me a isaremarkable man, I said with emphasis. He started, dropped Mr. Kurtz turned his back on me. My hour of y, was,” and etl , very qui‘He said ‘Cold heavy glance favour was over; I found myself lumped along with Kurtz as a partisanofmethods at for which the time was not ripe: [was unsound! Ah?! but it was something to have eer m least.a choice of nightmares. I was ready to admit, who, Kurtz, Mr. to not really, s wildernes the to ~~ You are right, I said, remembering a certain conversat that He showed a concern at this heard. ‘The manager thinks you ought to be hanged.’

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CONRAD

intelligence which amused me at first. ‘I had better get out of the way quietly, hesaid, earnestly. ‘I can do no more for Kurtz now, and they would soon find some excuse. What’s to stop them? There’s a military post three hundred miles from here. “Well, upon my word, said I, ‘perhaps you had better go if you have any friends amongst the savages near by. ‘Plenty, he said. ‘They are simple people—and I want nothing, you know’ He stood biting his lip, then: ‘I don’t want any harm to happen to these whites here, but of course I was thinking of Mr. Kurtz’s reputation—but you are a ‘All right, said I, after a time. ‘Mr. Kurtz’s reputation is brother seaman and

safe with me. I did not know how truly I spoke.

.

“Heinformed me, lowering his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered the

dead. I could not stop him. Oh, [had an awful time of it this last month? “Very well; I said. ‘He is all right now. ‘Ye-e-es; he muttered, not very convinced apparently. ‘Thanks, said I; ‘I shall keep my eyes open. ‘But quiet—eh®’ he urged, anxiously. ‘It would be awful for his reputation if anybody here ’ I promised a complete discretion with great gravity. ‘I have a canoe and three black fellows waiting not very far. I am off. Could you give me a few Martini-Henry cartridges?’ I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He helped himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. ‘Between sailors—you know—good English tobacco. At the door of the pilothouse he turned round—'‘T say, haven’t you a pair of shoes you could spare?’ He raised one leg. ‘Look.’ The soles were tied with knotted strings sandal-wise under his bare feet. I rooted out an old pair, at which he looked with admiration before tucking it under his left arm. One of his pockets (bright red) was bulging with cartridges, from the other (dark blue) peeped “Towson’s Inquiry, etc., etc. He seemed to think himself excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness. ‘Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetry— his own, too, it was, he told me. Poetry!’ He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these delights. ‘Oh, he enlarged my mind!’ “Good-bye, said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night. Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him— whether itwaspossible tomeet such a phenomenon!.eh . brh Liidskbood a “When Iwoke up shortly after midnight his warning can came to my mind with its hint of danger that. seemed, in the starred darkness, real enough to make me get up for the purpose of having a look round. On the hillabig -fire-burned, Ss fitfully a crooked corner of the station-house. One of the agents with a picket™ of a few of our blacks, armed for the purpose, was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep within the forest, red gleams that wavered, that seemed to sink and rise from the

ground amongst confused columnar shapes of intense blackness, showed the exact position of the camp where Mr. Kurtz’s adorers were keeping their uneasy vigil. . The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the air with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration. A steady droning sound of many men chanting each to himself

** bicket: A band of sentries.

Heart of Darkness, 3

1209

some weird incantation came out from the black, flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect upon my halfawake senses. I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a pent-up and mysterious frenzy, woke me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut short all at once, and the low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence. I glanced casually into the little cabin. A light was burning within, but Mr. Kurtz was not there. “I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my eyes. But I didn’t believe them at first —the thing seemed so impossible. The fact is I was completely , unnerved by a sheer blank fright, pure abstract terror, unconnected with any distinct — how shall shape of physical danger. What made this emotion so overpowering was I define it?—the moral shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly. This lasted of course the merest fraction of a second, and then the usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind, which I saw impending, was positively welcome and composing. It pacified me, in fact, so much, that I did not raise an alarm. “There was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster” and sleeping on a chair on deck within three feet of me. The yells had not awakened him; he snored very slightly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore. I did not betray Mr. Kurtz—it was ordered I should never betray him—it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone,— and to this day I don’t know why I was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that experience. “As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail—a broad trail through the grass. I remember the exultation with which I said to myself, ‘He can’t walk—he is crawling with on all-fours—I’ve got him? The grass was wet with dew. I strode rapidly hima giving clenched fists. I fancy I had some vague notion of falling upon him and woman with drubbing. I don’t know. I had some imbecile thoughts. The knitting old to be sitting at the cat obtruded herself upon my memory as a most improper person the air out of in the other end of such an affair. I saw a row of pilgrims squirting lead the steamer, and Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would never get back to advanced age. Such imagined myself living alone and unarmed in the woods to an beat of the drum with silly things—you know. And I remember I confounded the . the beating of my heart, and was pleased at its calm regularity night was very clear; a The listen. to d stoppe then h— thoug track “T kept to the black things stood very dark blue space, sparkling with dew and starlight, in which

of me.Iwas strangely cocksure of d still. Ithought I could see a kind of motion ahea the track and ran in a wide semicircle (I verily \

actually left ht. everything that nigI that stir, of that motion I had believe chuckling to myself) so as to get in front of g Kurtz as though it had seen—if indeed I had seen anything. I was circumventin been a boyish game.

25 ulster: A long overcoat. -

|

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“I came upon him, and, if he had not heard me coming, I would have fallen over

him, too, but he got up in time. He rose, unsteady, long, pale, indistinct, like a vapour exhaled by the earth, and swayed slightly, misty and silent before me; while at my back the fires loomed between the trees, and the murmur of many voices issued from the forest. I had cut him off cleverly; but when actually confronting him I seemed to come to my senses, I saw the danger in its right proportion. It was by no means over yet. Suppose he began to shout? Though he could hardly stand, there — hide yourself, he said, in that prowas still plenty of vigour in his voice. ‘Go away

We were within thirty yards from the found tone. It was very awful. I glanced-back.

nearest fire. A black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms, across the glow. It had horns—antelope horns, I think—on its head. Some sorcerer, some witch-man, no doubt: it looked fiend-like enough. “Do you know

he answered, raising his voice for that what you are doing?’ I whispered. ‘Perfectly, single word: it sounded to me far off and yet loud, like a hail through a speakingtrumpet. If he makes a row we are lost, | thought to myself. This clearly was not a case for fisticuffs, even apart from the very natural aversion I had to beat that

Shadow—this wandering and tormented thing. ‘You will be lost, I said—‘utterly lost’ One gets sometimes such a flash of inspiration, you know. I did say the right thing, though indeed he could not have been more irretrievably lost than he was at this very moment, when the foundations of our intimacy were being laid—to endure—to endure— even to the end— even beyond. “‘T had immense plans, he muttered irresolutely. ‘Yes, said I; “but if you try to shout lll smash yourwith———’ head There was not a stick or stone near. ‘I will throttle you for good, I corrected myself. ‘I was on the threshold of great things, he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run sag ONG cold, And-now for this stupid scoundrel Your succéssin Europe is assured in any case, I affirmed, steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of him, you under-

stand—and indeed it would have been very little use for any practical purpose. | tried to break the spell—the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness—that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlaw-

ful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And, don’t you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head— though I had a very lively sense of that danger, too—but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I

could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke him—himself—his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the

earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air. I’ve been telling you what we said— repeating the phrases we pronounced — but what’s the good? They were common everyday words—the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in

Heart ofDarkness, 3

nightmares. Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, | am the man. And I wasnt arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear— concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my only chance— barring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn’t so good, on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! Itell you, it had gone mad-T had— for my sins, I suppose—to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to one’s belief in mankind as

his final burst ofsincerity. He struggled with himself, too.

saw it—I heard it. Isaw

threimconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet Struggling blindly with itself. 1 kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at last stretched on the couch, I wiped my forehead, while my legs shook under me as though I had carried half a ton on my back down that hill. And yet I had only supported him, his bony arm clasped round my neck—and he was not much heavier than a child. “When next day we left at noon, the crowd, of whose presence behind the curtain of trees I had been acutely conscious all the time, flowed out of the woods again, filled the clearing, covered the slope with a mass of naked, breathing, quivering, bronze bodies. I steamed up a bit, then swung downstream, and two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the splashing, thumping, fierce river-demon beating the water with its terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air. In front of the first rank, along the river, three men, plastered with bright red earth from head to foot, strutted to and fro restlessly. When we came abreast again, they faced the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they a shook towards the fierce river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with

pendent tail—something that looked like a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany. the | “We had carried Kurtz into the pilot-house: there was more air there. Lying on human of couch, he stared through the open shutter. There was an eddy in the mass to the very bodies, and the woman with helmeted head and tawny cheeks rushed out all that wild mob brink of the stream. She put out her hands, shouted something, and utterance. took up the shout in a roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless “Do you understand this?’ I asked. mingled expres“He kept on looking out past me with fiery, longing eyes, with a smile, a smile of indesion of wistfulness and hate. He made no answer, but I saw a moment after twitched finable meaning, appear on his colourless lips that a had been torn out of convulsively. ‘Do I not?’ he said slowly, gasping, as if the words al him by a supernatural power. ms on pilgri e I saw the “J pulled the string of the whistle, and I did this becaus sudden the a jolly lark. At deck getting out their rifles with an air of anticipating wedged mass of bodies. that h throug terror abject of screech there was a movement on deck disconsolately. I pulled ‘Don’t! don’t you frighten them away, cried someone leaped, they crouched, they the string time after time. They broke and ran, they

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swerved, they dodged the flying terror of the sound. The three red chaps _ flat, face down on the shore, as though they had been shot dead. Only the and superb woman did not so much as flinch, and stretched tragically her after us over the sombre and glittering river. “And then that imbecile crowd down on the deck started their little could see nothing more for smoke.

had fallen barbarous bare arms |

fun, and I

“The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz’s life was running swiftly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time.

The manager was very placid, he had no vital anxieties now, he took us both in with a comprehensive and satisfied glance: the ‘affair’ had come off as well as could be wished. I saw the time approaching when I would be left alone of the party of ‘unsound method. The pilgrims looked upon me with disfavour. I was, so to speak, numbered with the dead. It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partnership, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phantoms. “Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last. It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart. Oh, he struggled! he struggled! The wastes of his weary brain were haunted by shadowy images now— images of wealth and fame revolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression. My Intended, my station; my career, my ideas—these were the subjects for the occasional utterances of elevated sentiments. The shade of the original Kurtz frequented the bedsideof the hollow sham, whose fate it was to be buried presently in the mould of primeval earth. But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power. “Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He desired to have kings meet him at railway-stations on his return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he intended to accomplish great things. “You show them you have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability, he would say. ‘Of course you must take care of the motives —right motives— always. The long reaches that were like one and the same reach, monotonous bends that were exactly alike, slipped past the steamer with their multitude of secular” trees looking patiently after this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings. I looked ahead —piloting. ‘Close the shutter, said Kurtz suddenly one day; ‘I can’t bear to look at this’ I did so. There was a silence. ‘Oh, but I will wring your heart yet!’ he cried at the invisible wilderness. “We broke down—as I had expected—and had to lie up for repairs at the head of an island. This delay was the first thing that shook Kurtz’s confidence. One morning he gave me a packet of papers and a photograph—the lot tied together with a

*° secular: Lasting from century to century.

Heart ofDarkness, 3

shoe-string. ‘Keep this for me, he said. “This noxious fool’ (meaning the manager) “is capable of prying into my boxes when I am not looking. In the afternoon I saw him. He was lying on his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew quietly, but I heard him mutter, ‘Live rightly, die, die...’ I listened. There was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep, or was it a fragment of a phrase from some newspaper article? He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again, ‘for the furthering of my ideas. It’s a duty’ “His was an impenetrable darkness. Ilooked at him as you peer down at a man

who islying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. But I had not much time to give him, because I was helping the engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders, to straighten a bent connecting-rod, and in other such matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchetdrills—things I abominate, because I don’t get on with them. I tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard; |toiled wearily in a wretched scrap-heap— unless I had the shakes too bad to stand. “One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little — tremulously, ‘I am lying here in the dark waiting for death’ The light was within a | foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, ‘Oh, nonsense!’ and stood over him as if

Supreme moment of complete knowledge? He‘cried ina whisper at some image, at Se

-

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*

a

—

Frente

—

.

room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a that questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with s peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuou and hands our shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon faces.

doorway, and nly the manager’s boy put his insolent black head in the E Ae Ao ——

mpt— g said in a tone of scathinconte

—~*“MVistah Kurtz—he dead? ~ my dinner. I “All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with much. There was a ! believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not eat so beastly, beastly dark. I lamp in there —light, don’t you know— and outside it was a judgment upon the went no more near the remarkable man who had pronounced What else had been there? adventures of his soul on this earth. The voice was gone. something in a muddy - But I am of course aware that next day the pilgrims buried hole.

“And then they very nearly buried me. and then. I did not.I “However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz there to show my loyalty to Kurtz remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and

ee

—

=

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once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is themost unexciting contest you can imagine, It takes place in an impalpable graynéss, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without | spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, with- | out the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much | belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of | ‘ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was | | ‘within-ahair’s breadth ofthe last opportunity for pronouncement, and | found with | | humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I | affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I | had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that | could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up—he had judged. “The horror!’ He was.a remarkable man. After all, | this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it’ had _a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it-had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth —the strange commingling of desire and hate-And it is not my own extremity Iremember best—a vision of grayness without form filled with physical pain, anda careless contempt for the evanescence of all things — even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry— much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond, when a long time after I heard oncé more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrownto me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal. “No, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which I remember mistily, with a shuddering wonder, like a passage through some inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire. I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritatingpretence, because I

feltsosure they could not possibly know the things Iknew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance. I daresay I was not very well at that time. I

Heart of Darkness, 3

tottered about the streets —there were various affairs to settle— grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons. I admit my behaviour was inexcusable, but then my temperature was seldom normal in these days. My dear aunt’s endeavours to ‘nurse up my strength’ seemed altogether beside the mark. Tf was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing. Ikept the bundle of papers given me by Kurtz, not knowing exactly what to do withit.His mother had died lately, watched over, as I was told, by his Intended. A clean-shaved man, with an ‘Official manner and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, called on me one day and made inquiries, at first circuitous, afterwards suavely pressing, about what he was pleased to denominate certain ‘documents.’ I was not surprised, because I had had two rows with the manager on the subject out there. I had refused to give up the smallest scrap out of that package, and I took the same attitude with the spectacled man. He became darkly menacing at last, and with much heat argued that the Company had the right to every bit of information about its ‘territories. And said he, ‘Mr. Kurtz’s knowledge of unexplored regions must have been necessarily extensive and peculiar — owing to his great abilities and to the deplorable circumstances in which > L-assured him Mr. Kurtz’s knowledge, however he had been placed: therefore extensive, did not bear upon the problems of commerce or administration. He invoked then the name-of’science. ‘It would be an incalculable loss iff etc., etc. I offered him the report on the ‘Suppression of Savage Customs, with the postscriptum torn off. He took it up eagerly, but ended by sniffing at it with an air of contempt. ‘This is not what we had a right to expect, he remarked. ‘Expect nothing else, I said. ‘There are only private letters? He withdrew upon some threat of legal proceedings, and I saw him no more; but another fellow, calling himself Kurtz’s cousin,

appeared two days later, and was anxious to hear all the details about his dear relative’s last moments. Incidentally he gave me to understand that Kurtz had been essentially a great musician. “There was the making of an immense success, said the man, who was an organist, I believe, with lank gray hair flowing over a greasy coatsay collar. I had no reason to doubt his statement; and to this day Iam unable to of what was Kurtz’s profession, whether he ever had any—which was the greatest joura for else or papers, the for wrote who painter a for him his talents. I had taken interview) nalist who could paint—but even the cousin (who took snuff during the that genius—on a universal was He exactly. been— had he could not tell me what large a noisily into point I agreed with the old chap, who thereupon blew his nose some family letoff bearing agitation, senile in withdrew cotton handkerchief and anxious to know ters and memoranda without importance. Ultimately a journalist visitor informed me something of the fate of his ‘dear colleague’ turned up. This side.’ He had furry Kurtz’s proper sphere ought to have been politics ‘on the popular on a broad ribbon, straight eyebrows, bristly hair cropped short, an eye-glass really couldn't write a and, becoming expansive, confessed his opinion that Kurtz large meetings. He had —‘but heavens! how that man could talk. He electrified bit himself to believe anything — faith— don’t you see? —he had the faith. He could get extreme party. ‘What party? I anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an Did I not think asked. ‘Any party, answered the other. ‘He was an—an—extremist. flash of curiosity, ‘what it was that so? I assented. Did I know, he asked, with a sudden

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had induced him to go out there?’ ‘Yes, said I, and forthwith handed him the famous Report for publication, if he thought fit. He glanced through it hurriedly, mumbling all the time, judged ‘it would do) and took himself off with this plunder. “Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of letters and the girl’s portrait. She _ struck me as beautiful—I mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie, too, yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features. She seemed ready to listen without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a go and give her back her portrait and those thought for herself. I| concluded I would | letters myself. Curiosity? Yes; and also some other feeling perhaps. All that had been

Kurtz’shad-passed out of my haiids:-his-soul, his body, his station, his plans, his ivory, his career. There remained only his memory and his Intended —and I wanted

up, too, to the past, in a way—to surrender personally all that remained to give that

of him with me to that oblivion which is the last word of our common fate. I don’t defend myself. I had no clear perception of what it was I really wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of unconscious loyalty, or the fulfilment of one of those ironic necessities that lurk in the facts of human existence. I don’t know. I can’t tell. But I went. “I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man’s life—a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage; but before the high and ponderous door, between the tall houses of a street as still and decorous as a well-kept alley in a cemetery, I had a vision of him on the stretcher, opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived —a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me—the stretcher, thephantombearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter

ofthe reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular andmuffled like the beatingofaheart —the heart of a conquering darkness. It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness, an invading and vengeful rush which, it seemed to me, I would have to keep back alone for the salvation of another soul. And the memory of what I had heard him say afar there, with the horned shapes stirring at my back, in the glow of fires, within the patient woods, those broken phrases came back to me, were heard again in their ominous and terrifying simplicity. I remembered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the

torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to see his collected languid manner, when he said one day, “This lot of ivory now is really mine. The Company did not pay for it. I collecteditmyself at a very great personal risk. I

am afraid they will try to claim it as theirs though. H’m.Itis a difficult Case. What do more than justice—no more than justice. I rang the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor, and while I waited he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panel— stare with that wide and immense stare embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe.Iseemed to hear the whispered cry, ‘The horror! The horror!’

“The dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty drawing-room with three long windows from floor to ceiling that were like three luminous and bedraped columns.

Heart of Darkness, 3

The bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in indistinct curves. The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness. A grand piano stood massively in a corner; with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a sombre and polished sarcophagus. A high door opened —closed. I rose. “She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk. She was in mourning. It was more than a year since his death, more than a year since the news came; she seemed as though she would remember and mourn for ever. She took both my hands in hers and murmured, ‘I had heard you were coming. I noticed she was not very young—I mean not girlish. She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering. The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me. Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and trustful. She carried her sorrowful head as though she were proud of that sorrow, as though

she would say, [—I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves. But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her that for he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful her and saw I minute, very this nay, — yesterday only died have to “me, too, he seemed in sorrow her saw sorrow—I her and death time—his of hinrin the same instant

‘the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together—I heard

them together. She had said, with a deep catch of the breath, ‘I have survived’ while

my strained ears seemed to hear distinctly, mingled with her tone of despairing regret, the summing up whisper of his eternal condemnation. I asked myself what I was doing there, with a sensation of panic in my heart as though I had blundered into a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not fit for a human being to behold. She motioned me to a chair. We sat down. I laid the packet gently on the little table, and she put her hand over it. . . . “You knew him well, she murmured, after a moment of mourning silence. “Intimacy grows quickly out there; I said. ‘I knew him as well as itis possible for one man to know another. to “And you admired him, she said. ‘It was impossible to know him and not admire him. Was it?’ g fixity “46 was a remarkable man, | said, unsteadily. Then before the appealin ‘It was on, went I lips, my on words more for of her gaze, that seemed to watch impossible not to dumbness. ‘How ““T ove him, she finished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled as I! I had all his well so him knew one no that true! how true! But when you think noble confidence. I knew him best. with every word spo“you knew him best) I repeated. And perhaps she did. But smooth and white, d, forehea her only and ken the room was growing darker, love. and belief of light able remained illumined by the unextinguish repeated, a little louder. ‘You “You were his friend, she went on. ‘His friend} she

you to me. I feel I can speak must have been, if he had given you this, and sent have heard his last words— who you you— to you—and oh! I must speak. I want pride. ... Yes! 1am proud to know to know I have been worthy of him. .. . It is not

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I understood him better than any one on earth—he told me so himself. And since his mother died I have had no one—no one—to— to é “T listened. The darkness deepened. I was not even sure whether he had given me the right bundle. I rather suspect he wanted me to take care of another batch of his papers which, after his death, I saw the manager examining under the lamp. And the girl talked, easing her pain in the certitude of my sympathy; she talked as thirsty men drink. I had heard that her engagement with Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He wasn’t rich enough or something. And indeed I don’t know whether he had not been a pauper all his life. He had given me some reason to infer that it was his impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there. ““.. Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once?’ she was saying. ‘He drew men towards him by what was best in them” She looked at me with intensity. ‘It is the gift of the great, she went on, and the sound of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard—the ripple of the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of the crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness. “But you have heard him! You know!’ she cried. “Yes, I know, I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her— from which I could not even defend myself. “‘What a loss to me—to us!’—she corrected herself with beautiful generosity; then added in a murmur, “To the world’ By the last gleams of twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes, full of tears — of tears that would not fall.

“‘T have been very happy —very fortunate —very proud, she went on. ‘Too fortunate. Too happy for alittle while. And now I am unhappy for— for life’ “She stood up; her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a glimmer ofgold. Irose, too. “‘And of all this, she went on, mournfully, ‘of all his promise, and of all his

greatness, of his generous mind, of his noble heart, nothing remains — nothing but : a memory. You and I “We shall always remember him, I said, hastily.

“‘No!’ she cried. ‘It is impossible that all this should be lost—that such a life should be sacrificed to leave nothing —but sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them, too—I could not perhaps understand— but others knew of them. Something must remain. His words, at least, have not died? ““His words will remain, I said.

“And his example, she whispered to herself. ‘Men looked up to him—his ‘ goodness shone in every act. His example “True; I said; ‘his example, too. Yes, his example. I forgot that.

But I do not. I cannot—I cannot believe—not yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that nobody will see him again, never, never, never. “She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure, stretching them back and with clasped pale hands across the fading and narrow sheen of the window. Never ce

Heart of Darkness, 3

see him! I saw him clearly enough then. I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her, too, a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness. She said

suddenly very low, ‘He died as he lived’ “His end, said I, with dull anger stirring in me, ‘was in every way worthy of his life’ “‘And I was not with him, she murmured. My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity. ““Everything that could be done *T mumbled. “Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth—more than his own mother, more than— himself. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.’ “T felt like a chill grip on my chest. “Don’t, I said, in a muffled voice. “Forgive me. I—I—have mourned so long in silence—in silence. ... You were with him—to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear. . . . ““To the very end, I said, shakily. ‘I heard his very last words. . . ’ I stopped in a fright. “‘Repeat them, she murmured

in a heart-broken tone. ‘I want—I

want—

something — something — to — to live with.’ “T was on the point of crying at her, ‘Don’t you hear them?’ The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. “The horror! the horror!’ \

“1s

last word—to

live with? she insisted. ‘Don’t you understand I loved

\ him—I loved him —] loved him!’ “T pulled myself together and spoke slowly. “ &KRALOVSTVIN@, \

Institute

This postcard depicts the insurance company where Kafka was employed. He became a respected executive despite feeling torn between his passion for writing and his career. (Art Resource)

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| www | For links to more information

about Kafka, a quiz on The Metamorphosis, and information on the 2Ist-century relevance of Kafka,

see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

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TEXT IN CONTEXT:

FRANZ KAFKA

Kafka felt caught between his continued passion for writing and his desire to do well in his career, as he remarks in this journal entry: Now these two vocations (writing and working in an office)

cannot be compatible and have a fortunate outcome in common. The smallest success in the one field becomes a great disaster in the other... At the office I fulfill my obligations outwardly, but not my inner ones, and every unfulfilled inner obligation turns into a misfortune which does not find its way out of me.

Somehow he managed to succeed at both endeavors, becoming a respected executive handling claims and litigation as well as a successful writer. An Overwhelming Father. Exacerbating the pain he felt in his relationship with his father, Kafka lived at home for most ofhis life. In the essay, “A Letter to My Father,” he writes of his feelings of inferiority and humiliation, feelings that not surprisingly pervade the consciousness of his fictional characters: I was, after all, depressed even by your mere physical presence. I remember for instance how often we undressed together in the same bathing-hut. There was I, skinny, weakly, slight, you strong,

tall, broad. Even inside the hut I felt myself a miserable specimen, and what’s more not only in your eyes but in the eyes of the whole world, for you were for me the measure of all things. | was, after all,

depressed even by your mere physical presence. | remember for instance how often we undressed together in the same

Kafka was twice engaged to Felice Bauer but didn’t marry, and the failure of this relationship became an additional burden. Although his stories were praised by his friends, he was insecure about his writing and resisted publishing his work; only a few of his short stories and two novellas, The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung, 1915) and The Penal Colony (Die Strafkolonie, 1919) were published during his lifetime.

bathing-hut. There was I, skinny, weakly,

Tuberculosis.

slight, you strong,

eventually suffered from tuberculosis of the larynx, a particularly hateful illness for someone who spent his life struggling to communicate. After living in various sanatoriums in Prague, Kafka moved to Berlin in 1922, where his relationship with Dora Dymant brought him some happiness before he died on June 3, 1924. Before dying he asked his friend and executor, Max Brod, to burn his unpublished papers, which included three unfinished novels. Brod disregarded his friend’s request and published a number of short stories and sketches as well as the

tall, broad. Even inside the hut I felt myselfamiserable specimen, and what’s

more not only in your eyes but in the eyes of the whole world, for you were for me the measure ofall things. — Karka to his father, 1919

In 1917 Kafka was found to have tuberculosis, and he

incomplete novels The Trial (Der Prozess, 1925), The Castle (Das Schloss, 1926), and Amerika (1927), all of which deal with the effects

of totalitarianism on individuals.

Franz Kafka, 1883-1924

Cracking the Frozen Sea Within.

1389

Kafka wrote, “The books we need

are the kind that act upon us like a nightmare, that make us suffer like

the death of someone we love more than ourselves . . . a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us” —and he proceeded to write such books. Kafka typically takes the point of view of a victim, someone who is confused about a particular system of power, the people in control, and how to gain access. In The Trial, the accused actually has an opportunity to speak to his accusers, but he knows neither the nature of his crime nor why he has been found guilty. In The Castle, contact with decision makers is not possible. There might be a telephone line into the interior of a power structure, but it is uncertain who might pick up the phone on the other end and what transaction might take place. Social power, like God, has receded into anonymity, not unlike the contemporary frustration of trying to reach an actual person at a phone company, but instead having to deal with recorded messages and an automated system. Kafka is a master of the short sketch that ends with a twist; he actually revived the biblical form of the PARABLE for a modern audience. A short parable called “Before the Law,’ an ALLEGORY of modern life,

encapsulates Kafka’s persistent themes. A man approaches the gateway of the Law, but a gatekeeper prevents him from entering. Finally, after years in front of the gate and endless discussions with the gatekeeper, the man asks one final question before dying: “Everyone strives to reach the Law, so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The gatekeeper answers, “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.” For Kafka, this gateway stands for all the institutional, doctrinal, and religious barriers that individuals confront over a lifetime.

Metamorphosis into an Insect. The demeaning, dehumanizing family, distance in The Metamorphosis is found within the home and the one for caring without r togethe live where parents and adult children phosis Metamor The g. another, where people talk without communicatin , is typical of a number of Kafka’s works in that it places an everyday The story ordinary world side by side with extraordinary phenomena.

Metamorphosis . . .

certainly represents the horrible imagery of an ethic oflucidity.

But it is also the product of that incalculable amazement man feels at being conscious ofthe

beast he becomes effortlessly. In this

fundamental ambi-

guity lies Kafka’s secret. These perpetual oscillations

between the natural and the extraordinary, the individual and the universal, the

tragic and the everyday, the absurd and the logical, are found throughout his work. ... — ALBERT CAMUS, 1955

about life; parables were popular during biblical times. ? parable: A short narrative designed to present a lesson in a by turning the parts of the theory into characters 3allegory: An allegory explains a concept or theory narration.

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FRANZ KAFKA

The books we need

begins with Gregory Samsa’s discovery that in his physical form he has

are the kind that act

been turned into an insect. Gregory’s condition corresponds to the

Ch

psychological state of an individual who awakens to the full dimensions of being trapped in a sense of helplessness and alienation in his or her everyday life. Gregory’s family, to whom he has dedicated his working life, is unsympathetic to his plight. Even though the unfortunate, pitiable change in him is completely out of his control, his parents and, eventually, even his sister feel he has let them down. One of the most

DORT Ue

mare, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves...a book should serve

Re te achat the

dehumanizing scenes in the story occurs when Mr. Samsa reasserts his

frozen sea within us.

authority as the head of the household and drives his son back into his room, throwing fruit at him. One of the apples that lodges in Gregory’s back rots and festers until Gregory dies without understanding what has happened to him. Gregory’s misfortune ironically forces his family out of their passive dependence; as they detach themselves from his suffering, they appear to take charge of their own lives and make plans for the future. The heartless bureaucracy was not unknown to the nineteenth century; after all, Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych* became a cog in Russia’s legal system. But Franz Kafka’s haunting version of the modern world, which makes the line between the ruling elite and the rest of society impossibly vague and suffocating, has been immensely influential in the twentieth century. Although Kafka’s writings had very little impact during his lifetime, audiences after World War II have found his portrayal of modern bureaucratic alienation and the paralyzing insecurities that individuals suffer in their private lives both prescient and profound. He continues to strike a deep chord in Western consciousness.

— Karka

@ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography Brod, Max. Franz Kafka:A Biography. 1960.

Hayman, Ronald. Kafka:A Biography. 1982. Pawel, Ernest. The Nightmare of Reason, A Life of Franz Kafka. 1984. Criticism

Bloom, Harold, ed. Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. 1988. Fickert, Kurt. End ofa Mission: Kafka’s Search for Truth in His Last Stories. 1993.

Gray, Ronald, ed. Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays. 1962.

“Ivan Ilych: Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych deals with a man who spends his life working to attain a middleclass, comfortable existence and ends up depressed and alone on his deathbed. (See p. 989.)

The Metamorphosis, |

Cw

The Metamorphosis Translated by J. A.Underwood

I Gregory Samsa woke from uneasy dreams one morning to find himself changed into a giant bug. He was lying on his back, which was of a shell-like hardness, and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-shaped brown belly, banded with what looked like reinforcing arches, on top of which his quilt, while threatening to slip off completely at any moment, still maintained a precarious hold. His many legs, pitifully thin in relation to the rest of him, threshed ineffectually before his eyes. “What’s happened to me?” he thought. This was no dream. His room, a normal human room except that it was rather too small, lay peacefully between the four familiar walls. Above the table, which was littered with a collection of drapery

samples — Samsa was a traveller—hung the picture that he had recently cut out of a magazine and mounted in an attractive gilt frame. Itshowed a lady in a fur hat and boa, sitting up straight and holding out an enormous fur muff that entirely concealed her forearms. er beat — raindrops Gregory’s gaze shifted to the window, and the murky weath don't I go “Why melancholy. quite feel audibly on the zinc windowsill — made him this was but thought, he about?” back’to sleep for a bit and forget all the fooling unable was he state present his in and impossible: he liked to sleep on his right side, always he right, the to over himself to assume that position. Try as he might to throw he attempts; hundred a made have rocked back into his previous position. He must when only up gave he and legs; toiling shut his eyes to keep out the sight of all those he became aware of a faint, dull ache in his side of a kind he had never felt before.

“God” he thought, “what a gruelling job I chose! On the go day in and day out.

on top of that The business side of it is much more hectic than in the office itself, and

meals there’s the wretched travelling, the worry about train connections, the awful relationhuman as far as changing and eaten at all hours, and the constant chopping friends. Oh, to ships are concerned, never knowing anyone for long, never making himself, pushed belly; his on up high hell with the whole thing!” He felt a slight itch itchy the located head; his lift to better on his back, slowly closer to the bedpost, the make to what know not did he spots place, which was covered with a lot of tiny white it immediately, however, of; and tried to touch the place with a leg, withdrawing him. because the contact sent cold shivers through he thought, “are He slid back into his original position. “These early mornings,” ers livelike travell Other sleep. his enough to drive one round the bend. A man needs up my write to g mornin the during kept women. I mean, when I go back to the hotel my with on that tried I If st. breakfa orders, some fellows are just sitting down to their it If that. at me, for thing bad a be boss I’d be out on my ear immediately. Might not see to gone have I'd ago; long weren't for my parents I'd have handed in my notice have fallen off his desk! Funny the boss and given him a piece of my mind. Why, he’d his employees from a great to habit, that, his sitting on the desk and talking down

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height, especially since you have to step right up close because of his deafness. Ah well, there’s still hope; once I’ve got the money together to pay off my parents’ debt to him—that might take another five or six years—I'll definitely do it. I’ll take the plunge. Meanwhile, though, I’d better get up; my train leaves at five.” And he looked across at the alarm clock that stood ticking on the wardrobe. “Heavens above!” he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were moving steadily onwards; in fact it was after half past, it was almost a quarter to. Had the alarm not rung? He could see from the bed that it had been set correctly for four o'clock; it must have rung. Yes, but—how could he have slept calmly through a ring so loud it shook the furniture? Well, not calmly, he hadn’t slept calmly, but probably all the more soundly for that. What was he to do now, though? The next train left at seven; to catch that would have meant a frantic rush, and there were the samples to be packed, and he was not feeling particularly spry to start with, far from it. And even if he did catch the train he was in for a rocket from the boss because the office boy would have been at the station at five and would have reported his absence long ago, the office boy being a tool of the boss and a spineless, mindless creature. What if he were to report sick? No, that would be highly embarrassing as well as suspicious, Gregory not having had a day’s illness in his five years with the firm. The boss would be sure to bring the health-insurance company’s doctor round and blame his parents for having an idle son, cutting short all their protests by quoting the doctor’s view that people were invariably in perfect health, just work-shy. And would he in fact be so wrong in this case? Aside from a certain drowsiness, quite superfluous after his long sleep, Gregory really felt very fit and was even aware of having an unusually robust appetite. As he was rapidly considering all this, though without managing to make up his mind to get out of bed —the alarm clock was just striking a quarter to seven — there came a cautious knock on the door at the head of his bed. “Gregory,” —it was his

mother speaking — “it’s a quarter to seven. Weren't you going off this morning?” That gentle voice! Gregory gave a start when he heard his own voice in reply; it was unmistakably his, but blended with it, as if welling up irrepressibly from below, was a distressing squeak that allowed the words to retain their clarity only for a moment, afterwards distorting their resonance to the point where one wondered whether one had heard correctly. Gregory had wanted to answer at length and explain everything, but in the circumstances he confined himself to saying, “Yes, yes—thank you, mother, I’m just getting up.” Because of the wooden door the alteration in Gregory’s voice was presumably not noticeable outside, for his mother, reassured by his words, went shuffling off. Their brief exchange, however, had alerted the other members of the family to the fact that Gregory, unexpectedly, was still at home, and soon his father was knocking at the door on one side, not hard, but with his fist. “Gregory, Gregory, he called, “what is it?” And after a little while he repeated his admonish-

ment in a deeper voice: “Gregory! Gregory!” At the door on the other side his sister was quietly plaintive: “Gregory? Are you all right? Can I get you anything?” “Just

coming,” Gregory replied to them both, trying by means of the most careful enunciation and by leaving long pauses between the words to remove any conspicuous quality from his voice. His father did indeed go back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered, “Gregory, open the door, please.” Nothing was further from Gregory’s

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mind, however; in fact he was congratulating himself on his cautious habit, adopted from his travels, of locking all the doors of his room at night even when he was at home. He first wanted to get up in peace and quiet, dress, and above all have breakfast, and only then contemplate the future, because as he knew full well he would never think things through to a sensible conclusion as long as he remained in bed. He recalled having quite often felt some slight pain in bed, possibly as a result of having lain awkwardly, which had turned out to be purely imaginary once he was up, and he was curious to see how this morning’s imaginings would gradually evaporate. Not for a moment did he doubt that the alteration in his voice was merely an early symptom of that occupational affliction of commercial travellers, the streaming cold. Getting rid of the quilt was quite simple; all he needed to do was to puff himself up a little and it fell to the floor. After that, however, things became difficult, particularly since he was so extraordinarily broad. He would have needed arms and hands to lift himself up, but instead he had only alarge number of legs that were in continuous, multifarious motion and in any case quite beyond his control. Whenever he tried to bend one it promptly stretched out straight; and if he did eventually manage to make the leg execute the desired movement all the others, left as it were to their

own devices, went on working away in a state of the most acute and painful excite— that’s enough dawdling in bed!” Gregory told himself. ment. “Right First he tried to get the lower part of his body out of bed, but this lower part, which incidentally he had not yet seen and of which he could form no very clear rage, idea, proved too unwieldy; progress was so slow; and when finally, in a kind of mistaken had he forward he summoned all his strength and recklessly thrust himself he felt the direction, striking the lower bedpost a violent blow, and the sharp pain sensimost the perhaps :nformed him that it was this lower part of his body that was

tive at the moment. his head So he tried to get his upper body out of bed first, carefully twisting y, and difficult without this round towards the edge of the mattress. He managed movethe follow to begin despite its width and great weight his body did eventually bed the of edge the beyond ment of his head. But when at length he had his head out let he end the in if that in mid air he suddenly thought better of continuing, afraid injury. head a ng sustaini his himself fall like that it would take a miracle to prevent lose consciousness; he would And the last thing he wanted to do just then was to

rather stay in bed. in his first position and But when after a similar struggle he lay back with a sigh fiercer combat than even again saw his legs locked in what seemed if anything again told himself he chaos, before, powerless to bring any kind of order into their e thing was to sensibl only the that he could not possibly stay where he was and that bed. At the his from f himsel risk all for even the faintest hope of somehow freeing decisions ate desper that intervals same time he was careful to remind himself at y as sharpl as d focuse he ts momen were no substitute for cool, calm thought. At such mist, ng morni the of sight y the his eyes would allow on the window; unfortunatel had little to offer in the way street, narrow the of side other the which even shrouded he said to himself as the alarm clock of brisk reassurance. “Seven o'clock already,”

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struck again, “seven o’clock and still such a mist.” And for a while he lay quiet, hardly breathing, hoping perhaps that total silence might bring about a return to normal, everyday reality. But then he said to himself, “Before a quarter past seven strikes I simply must be out of bed —right out. Anyway, someone will be here from the office by then to ask about me, because the office opens before seven o’clock.” And he set about rocking the whole length of his body evenly out of bed. If he allowed himself to fall out in this way his head, which he intended to lift smartly as he fell, would presumably remain unhurt. His back appeared to be hard; probably falling onto the carpet would do no damage to that. What worried him most was the thought of the loud crash that would inevitably accompany his fall and in all likelihood occasion if not alarm, at least concern beyond the various doors. But he would have to take that risk. When Gregory was already leaning half out of bed—the new method was not so much work as play, since all he had to do was to keep rocking to and fro—it occurred to him how simple everything would be if someone were to come to his assistance. Two strong people—he had in mind his father and the maid—would have been quite sufficient; they need only have slid their arms under his arched back, eased him out of bed, bent down with him, and simply waited with patient vigilance until he had swung himself over onto the floor, where his legs would then, he hoped, acquire some purpose. So, quite apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really have called for help? In spite of his predicament he was unable to suppress a smile at the thought. He had reached the stage where, if he rocked a little harder, he almost lost his

balance, and he was very soon going to have to make up his mind once and for all because in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven—when the doorbell rang. “That'll be someone from the office,” he said to himself and almost froze, except that

his legs started dancing about all the more frantically. There was a moment's silence. “They're not letting him in,’ Gregory said to himself, caught up in some absurd hope. But then of course, as always, the maid strode purposefully to the door and opened it. The visitor’s first word of greeting sufficed to tell Gregory who it was— the chief clerk himself. Why was Gregory of all people fated to work for a firm where the least little omission promptly aroused the greatest suspicion? Were all employees without exception knaves; was there not one single loyal and devoted person among them who, having failed to turn a mere couple of hours one morning to the firm’s advantage, was driven so distracted by qualms of conscience as to become incapable of getting out of bed? Would it not have been enough to send an apprentice round to inquire, assuming this whole inquisition to be necessary in the first place? Did the chief clerk really have to come in person, so demonstrating to the entire, innocent family that the investigation of this suspicious affair could be entrusted only to a person of his discernment. And it was more in consequence of the state of agitation into which Gregory was thrown by these reflections than as a result of a genuine decision that he now swung himself out of bed with all his might. There was a loud thump, though not in fact a crash. To some extent his fall had been softened by the carpet, and also his back was more resilient than Gregory had thought —hence the muffled and really quite unremarkable sound. But he had not been careful enough

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about his head and had banged it; he twisted it round and rubbed it on the carpet in anger and pain. “Something just fell down in there,” said the chief clerk in the room on the left. Gregory tried to imagine whether something similar might not happen to the chief clerk one day as had happened to him this morning. One had to admit it was possible. But as if in brusque reply to this question the chief clerk, in the next room, now took several resolute steps that made his patent-leather boots creak. From the room on the right Gregory’s sister informed him in a whisper, “Gregory, the chief clerk’s here.” “I know,” Gregory said under his breath, not daring to raise his voice to the point where his sister could have heard his reply. “Gregory, came his father’s voice from the room on the left, “the chief clerk has

come round to ask why you didn’t leave on the early train. We don’t know what to tell him. In any case he’d like a word with you personally. So please will you open the door. He’ll have the goodness, I’m sure, to overlook the mess in your room.” Mean-

while the chief clerk put in a friendly, “Good morning, Mr Samsa.” “He’s not well,” Gregory’s mother told the chief clerk as his father was still talking through the door. “He’s not well, sir, you can take it from me. What else would make Gregory miss his train? Why, the boy thinks of nothing but his work! It makes me quite cross that he never goes out in the evening; now he’s just had a whole week in town, but every evening he spent at home. He sits there with us at the table and quietly reads the paper or pores over timetables. His only amusement is when he does his fretwork. He made a little picture frame, for instance, which took him two or three evenings; in a youll be surprised how pretty it is; it’s hanging up in his room; you'll see it we'd way; the by sir, here, you're glad I’m door. the moment, when Gregory opens and I’m never have got Gregory to unlock the door by ourselves, he’s so stubborn; moment,” a be “Won't morning.” this wasn’t he said he sure he’s unwell, although miss a word Gregory said slowly and deliberately, keeping quite still in order not to explanation,” said the of this exchange. “I likewise, madam, can think of no other

am bound to say chief clerk. “Let us hope it’s nothing serious. On the other hand I fortunately— like you if or unfortunately are— that those of us who are in business reasons.” business for indispositions minor off very often obliged simply to shrug on the knocking impatiently, father his asked then?” “Can the chief clerk come in, fell; in silence embarrassed an left the on room the In door again. “No,” said Gregory. the room on the right his sister began to sob. ly she had only just Why did his sister not go round and join the others? Probab And whyever was she crying? got out of bed and had not even begun dressing yet. in, because he was in danger Was it because he did not get up and let the chief clerk pestering his parents again start then would of losing his job and because the boss quite superfluous for the surely were kind that about those old debts? Worries of st intention of abandoning present. Gregory was still around and had not the slighte on the carpet, and no one lying be to ed his family. Just at the moment he happen have expected him to let the chief who was aware of his condition would seriously for which a suitable excuse could clerk into the room. But this minor discourtesy, grounds for firing Gregory on the easily be found at a later stage, hardly constituted have been far more sensible to leave spot. And to Gregory's way of thinking it would

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him in peace now instead of plaguing him with tears and exhortations. But of course it was the uncertainty that was upsetting the others and that accounted for their behaviour. “Mr Samsa,” the chief clerk now called out in a louder voice, “what is going on? You barricade yourselfinyour room, answer in monosyllables, are causing your parents grave and unnecessary concern, and are in addition—this merely by the by— neglecting your professional duties in a quite outrageous manner. On behalf of your parents and your superior I ask you most earnestly for an immediate and unequivocal explanation. I am astonished, I really am. I knew and believed you to be a calm and reasonable person, and suddenly you seem bent on manifesting these freakish whims. Your superior in fact intimated to me this morning a possible explanation for your absences — it had to do with the cash-up recently entrusted to you—but | assure you I gave him virtually my word of honour that that could not possibly be the true explanation. Now, however, having witnessed your incredible obstinacy, I

find myself losing all inclination to plead your cause in any way whatsoever. I would add that your position is very far from assured. It was my original intention to tell you all this in private but, since you choose to make me waste my time here in this fruitless fashion, I see no reason why your good parents should not hear it too. Your figures recently have been most unsatisfactory; this is not of course the season for doing a lot of business, we recognize that; but a season for doing no business at all does not exist and cannot, Mr Samsa, be allowed to exist.” “But, sir,’ cried Gregory, most upset and forgetting everything else in his excitement, “I’m just going to open the door, this very moment. A slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, prevented me from getting up. I’m still in bed. But I already feel perfectly fit again. I’m getting out of bed now. Just be patient for a moment. Things aren’t going quite as well as I expected. I’m all right, though. Funny how something like that can hit you. Yesterday evening I was fine, my parents will tell you, or rather, I already had a sort of feeling then that something might be wrong. You'd think it would have shown on my face. Whyever didn’t I send word to the office! One always thinks, doesn’t one, that one can get over these things without staying at home. Sir, spare my parents this ordeal, please! All these reproaches you've levelled against me are quite unfounded; no one’s ever said a word to me about any of this. You may not have seen the latest batch of orders I sent in. Incidentally I'll be on my way by the eight o'clock train; the few hours’ rest has done me good. Don’t let me keep you, sir; I'll be in the office myself directly; would you be so kind as to tell the boss so with my compliments?” And while Gregory was blurting all this out, barely aware of what he was saying, he had managed to reach the wardrobe without difficulty, no doubt as a result of the practice already acquired in bed, and was now trying to use it to pull himself upright. He really did intend to open the door; he intended to let himself be seen and have a word with the chief clerk; he was eager to find out what the others, wanting him as they now did, would say when they saw him. If they panicked, Gregory would be absolved of responsibility and could relax. If on the other hand they reacted calmly, then he too would have no call to get excited and could indeed, if he hurried,

be at the station by eight. At first he kept slipping on the wardrobe’s smooth surface,

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but in the end, after one final heave, he was standing erect; he had completely forgotten about the pains in his lower region, acute though they were. Next he let himself fall against the back of a nearby chair, gripping it around the edge with his legs. Having got himself under control in this way, he stopped talking; now he could listen to what the chief clerk had to say. “Did you understand a word of that?” the chief clerk was asking Gregory's parents. “I suppose he’s not trying to make complete fools of us?” “Heavens,” cried his mother, already in tears, “he may be seriously ill and here we are, tormenting him. Meg!” she shouted then, “Meg!” “Yes, Mother?” cried his sister from the other side. They were communicating through Gregory’s room. “You must go round to the doctor this minute. Gregory’s ill. Quickly, now—fetch the doctor. Did you hear Gregory talking just then?” “That sounded like an animal,’ said the chief clerk in a quiet voice that contrasted sharply with the mother’s yelling. “Anna! Anna!” his father shouted down the hall in the direction of the kitchen, clapping his hands as he did so, “fetch a locksmith immediately!” In a moment the two girls were running down the hall with a rustle of skirts —how had his sister got dressed so quickly?— and pulling open the door. There was no sound of it being slammed shut behind them; probably they had left it open, as so often happens in homes visited by a major calamity. Gregory, however, felt much calmer. So they could no longer understand what perhe said, although his words had seemed to him quite clear, clearer than before; that d convince now were they Still, t. adjustmen haps his ear had made the necessary assurand e confidenc The help. to prepared were all was not well with him, and they good. He felt ance with which the first instructions had been issued had done him doctor and the men, both expected and mankind of involved once more in the body them, to between way precise any in shing the locksmith, without in fact distingui for possible as clear as voice his make to order In achieve great and surprising things. to care great taking though cough, little a gave he the coming decisive discussion coughing, which muffle it lest this sound too should turn out different from human had fallen in silence e Meanwhil judge. to t was an issue he no longer felt competen the table with the chief the adjoining room. Possibly his parents were sitting around the door, listening. clerk and whispering; possibly they were all leaning against s the door, let go of it toward f himsel pushed Using the chair, Gregory slowly this to support himself in an when he got there, threw himself against the door, used amount of adhesive on them— upright position —the balls of his feet had a small he set about trying to use his and there took a moment’s rest from his labours. Then y it seemed he had no proper mouth to turn the key in the lock. Unfortunatel admittedly his jaws were very teeth—how was he to grip the key? although ed to move the key, ignoring the strong; and indeed with their help he actually manag himself in some way since a brown fact that in doing so he was clearly damaging over the key, and drip onto the floor. fluid began to pour from his mouth, run down room, “he’s turning the key.” This was “Listen,” the chief clerk said in the adjoining they should all have called out to him, an enormous encouragement to Gregory; but it, Gregory,” they should have called, “go including his father and mother: “Go to they were all following his efforts in great on—turn that key!” And in the belief that

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excitement he bit down blindly on the key with all the strength he could muster. As the key gradually rotated in the lock he shuffled round in an arc; he was now supporting himself with his mouth alone, either hanging from the key or, if pressing was in order, pressing down on it once more with the whole weight of his body. The sharper sound as the bolt finally snapped back was literally a tonic to Gregory. With a sigh of relief he said to himself, “I didn’t need the locksmith, then.” And he laid his

head on the door handle to finish opening the door. His having to open the door in this way meant that he himself could still not be seen when the door was already open quite wide. He first had to work himself slowly round his leaf of the door, and he had to do it very carefully if he did not want to fall flat on his back before entering the other room. He was engaged in this difficult manoeuvre, too busy to notice anything else, when he heard the chief clerk suddenly utter a loud “Oh!” —it sounded like a gust of wind—and then he saw too, because the chief clerk had been nearest to the door, how he pressed a hand to his gaping mouth and started slowly giving ground as if an invisible force had been driving him steadily backwards. His mother, who despite the presence of the chief clerk was standing there with her hair all undone and still tousled from the night, looked first

with clasped hands at his father, then took two steps towards Gregory and sank down, her skirts billowing in circles around her, her face lowered to her bosom and quite invisible. His father looked hostile and clenched a fist as if to force Gregory back into his room; then, with a diffident glance round the living-room, he shaded his eyes with his hands and wept until his great chest shook. Gregory did not in fact enter the room now but leant against the inside of the other, still bolted leaf of the door in such a way that only half his body could be seen, and above it his head, tilted to one side, peering out at them. It had grown much

lighter meanwhile; clearly visible across the street was a section of the endless, greyblack building opposite—it was a hospital—with its hard, regular windows punched in the fagade; rain was still falling, but only in huge, individually visible drops that were also being hurled to earth literally one by one. A superabundance of breakfast things littered the table, because for Gregory’s father breakfast was the main meal of the day, which he used to sit over for hours, reading a variety of newspapers. Hanging on the wall opposite was a photograph of Gregory taken when he was in the army, showing him as a lieutenant: one hand on his sword, a carefree smile on his lips, his whole bearing and uniform commanding respect. The door to the hall was open, and since the front door stood open too one could see out onto the landing and the top of the stairs. “Right,” said Gregory, well aware that he was the only one to have retained his composure, “I shall now get dressed, pack my samples, and be off. You will let me go, won't you? You see, sir, |am not a stubborn person and I like my work; it’s a wearisome business, travelling, but I couldn’t live without it. Where are you off to, sir?

Back to the office? Are you? Will you make a faithful report of all this? One may find oneself temporarily incapacitated as far as work is concerned, but that is precisely the time to look back on one’s previous achievements and bear in mind that afterwards, once the hindrance has been overcome, one will undoubtedly work all the harder and with even greater application. I’m so deeply beholden to the boss, as you

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well know. On the other hand I have my responsibility towards my parents and my sister. I’m in a tight spot, but I shall work my way out of it. Only don’t make it more difficult for me than it is already. Stick up for me in the office! We travellers are not liked, I know. People think we earn a mint of money and have a great life into the

bargain. That is their preconception, and they have no particular occasion to review it. But you, sir, have a better grasp of the circumstances than the rest of the staff— indeed, between you and me, a better grasp than the boss himself, who in his capacity as employer readily allows his judgement to err to an employee’s disadvantage. You also appreciate how easily the traveller, who spends almost the entire year away — with from the office, can fall victim to gossip, ill luck, and unjustified complaints whatnothing hears usually he since himself, defending of not the slightest chance reaps he that trip a from exhausted returns he when ever about them and it is only be longer no then by can which of causes root the the appalling consequences, at with agree you that indication some me give just unravelled. Sir, before you go, least a small part of what I have said!” But the chief clerk had turned away with a shrug at Gregory’s first words, although he continued to look back at Gregory over his shoulder with pursed lips. And during the whole of Gregory’s speech he was not still for a moment but kept moving, without taking his eyes off Gregory, towards the door—very slowly, though, inch by inch, as if there existed some secret injunction against leaving the room. He had reached the hall already, and from the sharp movement with which he withdrew his foot from the living-room for the last time one might have thought out in he had just scorched his sole. Once in the hall, he stretched his right hand awaited deliverance l supernatura almost some if as front of him towards the stairs him there. clerk to Gregory realized that he could under no circumstances allow the chief be very to firm the with position his want not did leave in this frame of mind if he had they well; too things these and underst not seriously jeopardized. His parents did for of care taken was Gregory job this with that formed the conviction over the years to as worries te immedia their with pied preoccu life; moreover they were now so had not. The chief clerk have quite lost the faculty of foresight. Gregory, however, over; Gregory's future won ly ultimate and must be detained, mollified, persuaded, been there! She was had sister his only If it! and that of his family depended on quietly on his back. lying still was Gregory clever; she had already been in tears when have allowed himwould man, lady’s a quite Undoubtedly the chief clerk, who was talked him out of and door front the closed self to be swayed by her; she would have and Gregory must do something his panic in the hall. But his sister was not there, iar with his present capabilities unfamil quite himself. So, forgetting that he was still that his last speech had possitoo ng forgetti as far as moving about was concerned, the previous one, he let go of the bly if not probably been understood as little as tried to go to the chief clerk, who was door; thrust himself through the doorway; landing banister with both hands; but promptly

— clutchi lyng the already—absurd had this groped for a hold, onto his many legs. No sooner he as cry little a fell, giving he experienced a feeling of physical happened than, for the first time that morning, them, responded perfectly, as he well-being; his legs, with firm ground under

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discovered to his delight; indeed they strove impatiently to carry him where he wanted to go; and he was immediately convinced that an end to all the agony was at hand. But even as he lay there, swaying with pent-up movement, on the floor not far from his mother, just opposite where she knelt in a state of seemingly total selfabsorption, she suddenly sprang up, arms outstretched, fingers splayed, cried, “Help, for the love of God, help!”; craned her head forward as if trying to see Gregory better while on the contrary she was taking frenzied steps backwards; forgot the breakfast table behind her and, when she reached it, hopped distractedly up on it and sat on the edge; and seemed quite unaware of the fact that the overturned coffee pot beside her was emptying itself copiously onto the carpet. “Mother, mother,” said Gregory softly, looking up at her. He had forgotten all about the chief clerk for the moment, though at the sight of the coffee pouring out he could not stop himself snapping at the air several times with his jaws. At this his mother let out another yell, fell off the table, and fled into the arms ofhis father as he hurried towards her. But Gregory had no time for his parents now; the chief clerk, already on the stairs, had laid his chin on the banister for one last look back. Gregory took a run to make doubly sure of catching him; the chief clerk must have suspected something then because he leapt down several steps at once and disappeared, his parting cry of “Shoo!” echoing back up the stairwell. Unfortunately Gregory’s father, who until now had been relatively composed, appeared to find the chief clerk’s flight thoroughly unsettling, because instead of going after the man himself or at least not obstructing Gregory in his pursuit he seized the chief clerk’s stick, which the latter had left behind on a chair together with his hat and coat, took a large newspaper from the table in his other hand, and with much stamping of his feet and brandishing of the stick and newspaper started to drive Gregory back into his room. None of Gregory’s pleas availed, none were even understood; bend his head as meekly as he might, his father only stamped the louder. Across the room his mother, despite the cold weather, had thrown open a window and was leaning out, a long way out, pressing her face into her hands. This caused a powerful draught between street and stairwell that made the curtains billow, the newspapers rustle on the table, and one or two sheets even go floating across the floor. His father kept up the relentless pressure, hissing like a madman. Gregory, however, had had no practice at walking backwards and really could not go very fast. If only he could have turned round he would have been back in his room in an instant, but he was afraid of taxing his father’s patience by so time-consuming a manoeuvre, with the stick in his father’s hand threatening at any moment to deliver a mortal blow to his back or head. In the end,

though, Gregory had no alternative, for he found to his dismay that he could not even control his direction in reverse; so with repeated anxious glances at his father he began to turn himself round as quickly as possible, which in the event was very slowly indeed. His father, perhaps realizing that he meant well, did not hinder him in this but even, from a distance, directed the rotation process intermittently with the

end of his stick. If only it had not been for that unbearable hissing from his father! It threw Gregory into utter confusion. He was already nearly half-way round when, through continually listening for the hiss, he made a mistake and started turning the other way. But when, happily, he was facing the doorway at last, it became clear that

The Metamorphosis, I

his body was too wide to pass through just like that. His father, of course, given his state of mind at that moment, did not even begin to think of, for example, opening the other leaf of the door to provide Gregory with sufficient width of passage. His one and only idea was that Gregory must be got back into his room as quickly as possible. Nor would he ever have permitted the elaborate preparations Gregory would have had to make in order to assume an upright position and possibly get through the door that way. Instead he acted as if there had been no obstacle, urging Gregory on even more noisily than before; it no longer sounded like the voice of just one father behind him; things were really in earnest now, and Gregory thrust himself at the opening, come what might. One side of his body lifted up, he lay at an angle in the doorway, his flank was rubbed quite raw, some nasty-looking stains appeared on the white door, soon he was

stuck fast and couldn't have moved

another inch

unaided, his legs on one side hanging quivering in mid air while those on the other were squashed painfully against the floor—at which point his father gave him a truly liberating shove from behind and he went flying right into his room, bleeding profusely. The door was banged to with the stick, and at last there was silence.

II Not until dusk did Gregory wake from a sleep so deep it had been like a coma. He would undoubtedly have woken before long even without being disturbed, because he felt quite rested and no longer sleepy, but his impression was that he had been roused by a quick footstep and by the door to the hall being carefully shut. The light of the electric street lamps shone wanly on the ceiling in places and on the upper was parts of the various pieces of furniture, but down below, where Gregory lay, it begindark. Probing still rather awkwardly with his feelers, which he was only now had hapning to appreciate, he pushed himself slowly over to the door to see what ly, and he pened there. His left side seemed to be one long scar; it pulled unpleasant suffered had was reduced to limping on his twin rows of legs. Moreover one leg miracle a severe damage during the course of the morning’s events—itwas almost and trailed lifelessly behind. that only the one had been damaged— did he notice what had in fact drawn him in door the reached had Not until he a bowl of sweetthat direction, namely the smell of something to eat. For there stood have laughed for ened milk with little slices of white bread floating in it. He could he promptly and g, joy, because he felt even hungrier than he had in the mornin in disapagain drew it out plunged almost his whole head into the milk. But he soon tender his of on account pointment; it was not only that eating was difficult for him also but — ally systematic left side——and he could only eat if his whole body panted drink, e favourit milk was his that he did not at all like the taste, although ordinarily him; indeed it was with a for it t brough had sister his which would have been why bowl and crawled back into feeling almost of disgust that he turned aside from the the middle of the room. could see through the gap In the living-room the gas had been lit, as Gregory Gregory's father liked to read the between the doors, but whereas usually at this time sometimes to his sister, too, now there was afternoon paper aloud to his mother and

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not a sound to be heard. Well, perhaps the reading aloud, which his sister was always telling him about in her letters, had dropped out of use in recent weeks. But the whole flat was so quiet, though it was surely not empty. “What a peaceful life the family was leading!” Gregory said to himself, and as he stared fixedly into the darkness he felt enormously proud of having been able to provide his parents and his sister with such a life in so pleasant a flat. But what if all this peace, all this prosperity, all this satisfied contentment were to end in terror? Rather than risk losing himself in such thoughts Gregory preferred to move about, and he began crawling back and forth across the room. Once during the long evening the door on one side and once the door on the other were opened a crack and then quickly closed again; someone had presumably felt the urge to come in but had had too many misgivings. Gregory stationed himself right by the door to the living-room, determined to get his diffident visitor into the room somehow or other or at least find out who it was; but from then on the door was not opened again, and Gregory waited in vain. In the morning, with the doors locked, everyone had wanted to come in; now that he had opened one door and the others had clearly been opened during the day no one came any more, and the keys had even been taken and put back in the locks from outside. It was late into the night before the living-room light went out, and then it quickly became clear that his parents and his sister had in fact stayed up all that time, because the three of them could quite distinctly be heard tiptoeing away. Now no one would be coming into Gregory’s room until morning, surely, so he had a long while in which to consider in peace and quiet how best to reorganize his life. But the tall, spacious room, in which he was obliged to lie flat on the floor, frightened him without his being able to discover why, because after all it was his room and he had been living in it for five years—and with a half-unconscious change of direction, and not without a slight feeling of shame, he went scuttling under the couch, where despite the fact that his back was a little squeezed and he could no longer lift his head he immediately felt very much at home, his only regret being that his body was too wide to be accommodated under the couch in its entirety. There he spent the whole night, some of it in a doze from which his stomach kept waking him with a start, but some of it a prey to worries and obscure hopes, all of which, however, led him to the conclusion that for the time being he must keep calm and try, by being patient and exercising great consideration, to make it easier for his family to bear the inconvenience to which he was in his present state quite frankly obliged to put them. Early the next morning, almost before it was light, Gregory had an opportunity to test the firmness of his new resolutions when his sister, almost fully dressed,

opened the door from the living-room and nervously peered in. She did not spot Gregory straight away, but when she noticed him under the couch— God, he must be somewhere, he couldn’t just have flown away—she got such a fright that she involuntarily slammed the door shut again. But as if thinking better of her action she opened it again immediately and tiptoed into the room, rather as if she were in the presence of a chronic invalid or even a stranger. Gregory, his head pushed forward to the edge of the couch, watched her. Would she notice that he had left the

The Metamorphosis, 1

milk—though not because he had no appetite, far from it—and would she bring some other food that suited him better? If she did not do so of her own accord he would rather starve than tell her, despite what was really a terrible urge to dart out from under the couch, hurl himself at his sister’s feet, and beg her to bring him

something good to eat. His sister, however, noticing immediately and with some surprise that the bowl was still full, with only a little milk spilt around it, picked it up— not, admittedly, with her bare hands but with a rag—and carried it out. Gregory was extremely curious to know what she would bring in its stead, and he devoted a great deal of thought to it. But never could he have guessed what his sister, in the goodness of her heart, actually did. She brought him a whole selection of things, all laid out on an old newspaper, to see what he liked. There were some old, half-rotten vegetables; the bones from supper, covered with congealed white sauce; some raisins and almonds; a piece of cheese that Gregory had pronounced inedible two days previously; a slice of dry bread, another spread with butter, and another spread with butter and salted. As well as all this she brought back the bowl, which it had probably been decided once and for all should be Gregory’s, this time with water in it. Very tactfully, knowing that Gregory would not eat in her presence, she then withdrew and even turned the key in the lock to let Gregory know that he could set to as he pleased. Gregory’s legs whirred as he crossed to where the food was. His wounds must incidentally have healed up completely by now, for he felt no further impediment; he was astonished at this and remembered how he had nicked his finger with a day knife more than a month ago and how the wound had still been quite painful the before yesterday. “Have I perhaps become less sensitive?” he thought, sucking greedmost imily at the piece of cheese, to which of all the things available he had been his eyes, he mediately and emphatically drawn. With tears of contentment in The fresh demolished in quick succession the cheese, the vegetables, and the sauce. he went food did not appeal to him; in fact, finding even the smell ofitintolerable, long finished all so far as to drag the things he wanted to eat a little way off. He had should withdraw, his the food and was simply lazing about when, as a sign that he although he had sister began slowly turning the key. This roused him immediately, couch. But it required been more than half asleep, and he hurried back beneath the even for the short time enormous strength of mind for him to stay under the couch meal his body had his sister spent in the room, because as a result of his copious breathe. Between bouts of swollen slightly and in that narrow space he could hardly eyes as his unsuspecting near-suffocation he watched with somewhat protruding but even the food Gregory sister swept together with a broom not only the scraps

was no longer needed, and hurriedly had left untouched, as if realizing that it too it

a wooden lid before carrying threw everything into a pail that she covered with emerged from beneath the couch to out. Hardly was her back turned before Gregory stretch and distend himself. day, once in the morning This was how Gregory now received his food each anda second time after the family’s when hisparents and themaid were stillasleep, sleep and the maid was sent off on lunch, because then his parents had another little they no more wished Gregory to starve some errand or other by his sister. Doubtless too much for them to learn about his than she did, but perhaps it would have been

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eating habits other than by hearsay, perhaps his sister was concerned to spare them even what might have been only a minor sorrow, for in all conscience they could be said to be suffering enough. What excuses had been used on that first morning to get the doctor and the locksmith out of the flat again Gregory was never able to discover, because since there was no understanding him it did not occur to anyone, not even to his sister, that he might be able to understand other people, so that when his sister was in his room he had to content himself with her intermittent sighs and invocations of the saints. It was only later, when she had grown accustomed to things to a certain extent—there could never of course be any question of her becoming fully accustomed— Gregory occasionally caught a remark that was meant well enough or could be so interpreted. “He enjoyed his food today,” she would comment if Gregory had scoffed the lot, whereas if the opposite was the case, and by degrees it came more and more often to be so, she would say almost sadly, “Oh, he’s left everything again.” But while Gregory was unable to learn any news directly he did pick up a certain amount from the adjoining rooms, and as soon as he heard voices he would run to the door concerned and press his whole body up against it. Particularly in the early days there was no conversation that did not in some way, if only obliquely, have to do with him. For two days there were discussions at every meal as to how they should now conduct themselves, but between mealtimes, too, the same subject kept coming up, because there were always at least two members of the family at home; presumably no one wanted to stay at home on his or her own, and there could be no question of leaving the flat completely deserted. Also the maid had come to his mother on the very first day— it was not clear how much she knew of what had happened —and asked on bended knee to be discharged immediately, and when a quarter of an hour later she came back to say goodbye she expressed thanks for her discharge with tears in her eyes, as if it had been the greatest blessing ever bestowed on her in that house, and spontaneously delivered herself of a fearful oath to the effect that she would never breathe a word to anyone. This meant that Gregory’s sister, together with his mother, now had to do the cooking as well, although there was not much work involved as they were hardly eating anything. Again and again Gregory heard one of them vainly exhorting the others to eat, only to receive the inevitable reply, “No, thank you, I’ve had enough,” or words to that effect. No drinking went on either. His sister was always asking his father if he wanted a beer, generously offering to go out for it herself, and when he said nothing she suggested, with a view to removing any misgivings he might have, that she could even send the janitor, but eventually Gregory’s father told her firmly, “No,” and the subject was not mentioned again. In the course of the very first day his father gave both his mother and his sister a comprehensive account of the family’s financial circumstances and prospects. Every now and then he got up from the table and went over to the small patent safe that he had retrieved from the collapse of his business five years before to fetch a receipt or a notebook or whatever it might be. He could be heard unlocking it—a complicated process —and, having removed what he wanted, locking it again. In part these elucidations of his father’s were the first gratifying communications to have reached

The Metamorphosis, 1

Gregory’s ears since his captivity began. He had always assumed that his father had been left with nothing whatsoever from that business; at least, his father had never

said anything to him to the contrary, nor as a matter of fact had Gregory ever asked him about it. The catastrophe had plunged them all into utter despair, and Gregory’s sole concern at that time had been to do everything to erase it from the family’s memory as swiftly as possible. That was when he had begun to work with quite exceptional enthusiasm and from being a minor clerk had become a traveller virtually overnight,as such of course enjoying an entirely different earning potential since his results, if he was successful, were immediately convertible, in terms of com-

mission, into cash that could be taken home and laid on the table before the astonished and delighted eyes of the family. Those had been marvellous times, and they had never recurred since, at least not with the same splendour, although subsequently Gregory was earning so much money that he was in a position to meet the expenses of the entire family and indeed did so. They had simply started taking it for granted, not just the family but Gregory himself; they accepted the money gratefully, Gregory provided it willingly, but no special warmth seemed to be engendered any more. Only his sister had remained close to Gregory in spite of everything, and since unlike himself she was very fond of music and could play the violin most movingly it was his secret ambition, regardless of the expense that would inevitably be involved— he’d manage to cover that in some other way—to send her to the Conservatory in the following year. During his brief stays in the city the Conservatory often cropped dream up in conversation with his sister, but never as anything more than a beautiful unwelwere references innocent those even and that could not possibly come true, on the subject come to their parents’ ears; Gregory, however, had quite definite ideas Eve. Christmas on solemnity some with and meant to make his announcement passed at ion—th condit present his in futile Such were the thoughts—quite to tired too twice, or Once g. listenin door, the through his head as he stood glued to but door, the against knock and droop head his take in any more, he inadvertently let made had been heard in he lifted it again immediately because even the tiny sound it up to now?” his father he “What’s talking. the next room, and they had all stopped then was the interonly and door, the towards said after a while, obviously looking . rupted conversation gradually resumed father tended to be very Gregory now became thoroughly acquainted—for his these matters for some with f himsel ned repetitive, partly because he had not concer everything on first grasp always not did time, partly too because Gregory’s mother admittedly very an ing, hstand notwit rophe hearing —with the fact that, the catast course slightly of now days, old the from small amount of capital still survived late in the mean time. Furswollen by the interest that had been allowed to accumu each month—he had kept home t brough thermore the money that Gregory had used up and had itself accumuonly the loose change for himself—had not all been Gregory nodded enthusiastically, lated to form a modest capital. Behind his door thrift. He could in fact have used delighted to hear of this unexpected prudence and the boss, and the day when he to debt s the money to clear some more of his father’ have been very much nearer, but as could write that item off completely would btedly the better one. things were his father’s arrangement was undou

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The fact remained that the sum was nowhere near enough for the family to be able, for example, to live off the interest; it might be enough to support them for one or at most two years, but that was all. In other words it was money that ought not in fact to be touched at all but ought to be put aside for an emergency; the money for day-to-day expenses had to be earned. Now Gregory’s father, though in good health, was an old man who had not worked for the past five years and in any case could not take on very much; during those five years, which had been the first holiday of his arduous yet unsuccessful life, he had put on a great deal of weight and become very clumsy in his movements as a result. And was Gregory’s old mother to start going out to work when, crippled as she was by asthma, she found it an effort to walk round the flat and spent every other day lying on the sofa with the window open, gasping for breath? And was his sister to go out to work, a child of only seventeen whose life until then surely no one would have begrudged her, consisting as it had of dressing prettily, sleeping long hours, lending a hand with the housework, indulging in a few modest pleasures, and above all playing the violin? Whenever the talk turned to this necessity for earning money Gregory let go of the door and threw himself down on the cool leather sofa beside it, burning with shame and grief. Often he lay there right through the night, not sleeping a wink but simply scratching at the leather for hours on end. Or he embarked on the laborious task of pushing a chair over to the window and crawling up the wall to the sill in order to brace himself in the chair and lean against the glass, obviously in response to some memory of the feeling of freedom it had once given him to look out of the window. Because the fact of the matter was that, as the days went by, even things that were quite close he saw less and less clearly; the hospital opposite, the all-too-frequent sight of which he had formerly cursed, he could not see at all now, and had he not

known full well that he lived in the quiet but entirely urban Charlotte Street he might have thought his window overlooked a wilderness in which the grey sky and the grey earth merged indistinguishably. His thoughtful sister needed to see the chair standing there on only two occasions before she began, each time she had tidied up his room, pushing it carefully back beneath the window and even, from then on, leaving the inner casement open. If only Gregory had been able to speak to his sister and thank her for everything she was having to do for him he could have borne her attentions more easily; as it

was they pained him. Admittedly she tried to cover up the awkwardness of the situation as much as possible, and of course as time went by she became better and better at doing so, but in time, too, Gregory acquired a keener perception of things. Even her entrance was terrible for him. As soon as she had stepped over the threshold, and without even pausing to shut the door, for all her usual concern to spare everyone the sight of Gregory’s room, she ran straight to the window, tore it open with fumbling hands as if she were on the point of suffocating, and stood by it for a while, no matter how cold the weather, taking deep breaths. She terrified Gregory twice daily with this running and banging; he spent the whole time trembling under the couch, yet he was perfectly sure she would have spared him the experience had she anyhow found it in her power to remain in a room occupied by Gregory with the window closed.

The Metamorphosis,

Once— this must have been a month after Gregory’s metamorphosis, by which time his sister no longer had any particular reason to be astonished at his appearance — she came a little earlier than usual and found Gregory, motionless and at his most terrifying, still looking out of the window. Gregory would not have been surprised had she not come in, because his position made it impossible for her to open the window immediately, but not only did she not come in, she even withdrew smartly and shut the door; a stranger might almost have thought Gregory had been lying in wait for her with the intention of biting her. Gregory, of course, hid under the couch immediately, but he had to wait until noon before his sister returned, and when she did she seemed much more agitated than usual. He realized from this that she still found the sight of him unbearable and would inevitably go on finding it unbearable, and that it probably cost her a great effort of self-control not to run at the sight of even the small portion of his body that stuck out from beneath the couch. To spare her even this sight he one day, took his sheet, carried it over to the couch on his back—the job took him four hours—and there arranged it in such a way as to cover him completely, so that his sister could not see him even when she the sheet unnecessary she could after all have Had she considered bent down. removed it, because surely it was obvious that it could not be Gregory’s idea of fun to cut himself off so utterly and completely, yet she left the sheet as it was, and Gregory even thought he detected a look of gratitude when at one point, to see how his sister was taking the new arrangement, he carefully lifted the sheet a little with his head. For the first fortnight his parents could not bring themselves to enter his room, his sister’s present oval and he often heard them expressing unqualified approf sort of girl and had al ineffectu fairly a her efforts, whereas before they had thought and his mother father his both however, frequently lost patience with her. Now, and no sooner out, it cleaned sister his often waited outside Gregory’s room while state of the the of account detailed a them had she emerged than she had to give perhaps whether and time, this behaved room, what Gregory had eaten, how he had Gregory visit to wanted fact in mother His e. some slight improvement were noticeabl s argument using initially her, d restraine relatively early on, but his father and sister t. agreemen full in and y attentivel listened based on common sense to which Gregory she then cried out, bet Subsequently they had to restrain her by force, and when that I must go to him?” see you Don’t son! me go to Gregory, my poor, unfortunate come in, not every day did mother his if Gregory thought it might not be a bad idea much better than his so things od understo of course but perhaps once a week; she and, when all was said and done, sister, who for all her pluck was still a mere child

childish exuberance. had perhaps only taken on so hard a task ina fit of ed. He did not like to show himfulfill soon Gregory's wish to see his mother was s’ sake; hecould not move parent his for self at the window during the day, ifonly space; lying still he found difficult about much in the few square metres of floor slightest pleasure; so to amuse himenough at night; eating no longer gave him the walls and ceiling. He was particuself he adopted the habit of crawling all over the was quite different from lying on the larly partial to hanging from the ceiling; this vibrations went coursing through the floor; one could breathe more freely; gentle ction that Gregory found himself in body; and in the almost blissful state of abstra

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up there it sometimes happened that, much to his own astonishment, he let go and went crashing to the floor. But of course he now had his body under much better control than before, and even a fall like that did not harm him. Gregory’s sister

noticed his new pastime straight away —he left traces of adhesive behind when he crawled—and took it into her head to give Gregory as much crawling-space as possible by removing such items of furniture, chiefly the wardrobe and the desk, as precluded it. She could not, however, do this on her own; she dared not ask her father to help; the maid would certainly not have lent a hand because, although for her sixteen or so years of age she had stuck it out bravely since the departure of the previous cook, she had asked as a special dispensation to be allowed to keep the kitchen permanently locked and to be obliged to open it only on receipt of a specific signal; so his sister had no alternative but to take advantage of one of the father’s absences to fetch Gregory’s mother. And along his mother promptly came, uttering cries of pleasure and excitement, though she fell silent at the door of Gregory’s room. First, of course, his sister checked whether everything was all right in the room, only then letting the mother enter. Gregory had very hastily pulled the sheet down even lower and made more folds, and the whole arrangement really did look as if a sheet had simply been thrown over the couch at random. Gregory also refrained from stealing a glance under the sheet this time; he was prepared to forgo seeing his mother on this occasion, content with the fact that she had come at last. “Come on, you can’t see

him,” said his sister, obviously leading his mother by the hand. Gregory listened as the two frail women started to shift the old, rather heavy wardrobe; he could tell that his sister was deliberately doing most of the work herself the whole time, ignoring the anxious warnings of the mother, who was afraid she was going to strain herself. It took a very long time. After they had been at it for perhaps a quarter of an hour his mother said they should leave the wardrobe where it was: for one thing it was too heavy, they would not be finished before father came back, and with the wardrobe in

the middle of the room they would be blocking Gregory’s every move; for another thing it was by no means certain that in removing his furniture they were doing Gregory a favour. It seemed to her that the opposite was the case; she found the sight of the bare walls downright depressing; and who was to say that Gregory’s reaction would not be the same, since he had had the furniture for ages, was used to it, and

would feel lonely in the empty room. “And isn’t it,” his mother concluded in a low voice —in fact she had been virtually whispering the whole time as if to make sure that Gregory, of whose exact whereabouts she was unaware, should not even hear the sound of her voice, since she was already convinced he would not understand the

words— “isn’t it as if by removing the furniture we were showing that we had given up all hope of improvement and were callously leaving him to his own devices? I believe the best thing would be to try to keep the room exactly as it was, then when Gregory returns to us he will find everything the same and it will be that much easier for him to forget the time between.” Hearing his mother’s words, “Gregory realized that the fact that no one had addressed him directly in the past two months, coupled with the monotony of life in the bosom of the family, must have considerably muddled his wits; this was the only explanation he could find of his seriously having wanted his room cleared. Did he really wish to have his warm, friendly room, cosily furnished as it was with family

The Metamorphosis, I

heirlooms, transformed into a cave in which he would admittedly be able to crawl all over the place unimpeded but at the price of rapidly and completely forgetting his human past? Why, he was on the verge of forgetting already, and he had been rallied only by hearing his mother’s voice again after all this time. Nothing was to be removed; it must all stay; the positive influence that the furniture had on his condition was something he could not do without; and if the furniture prevented him as indulging in his stupid crawling, that was no disadvantage but a very good thing.

Unfortunately his sister thought otherwise; in discussions of Gregory’s affairs she had taken to presenting herself, not without some justification, as something of an expert compared with her parents, so that on this occasion too the mother’s advice was sufficient reason as far as the daughter was concerned for insisting on the removal not only of the wardrobe and the desk, which was all she had had in mind

originally, but of every piece of furniture in the room, the indispensable couch excepted. It was of course more than mere childish defiance and the self-confidence she had so unexpectedly and laboriously acquired in recent weeks that impelled her to make this demand; she had also observed with her own eyes how Gregory required a great deal of space for crawling, whereas he did not, so far as one could see, have the slightest use for the furniture. But perhaps another contributory factor at was the highly romantic nature of girls of that age, which, seeking gratification to trying of temptation the into Meg led instance every turn, had in the present to make Gregory’s plight even more horrific, thereby putting herself in a position patrolled Gregory which in room a in Because render him even greater services. empty walls probably no one but Meg would ever dare to set foot. shaken by her mother, And so it was that she would not allow her resolve to be

of herself, soon who even with the room as it was appeared to be nervous and unsure wardrobe out. the move to could she help what falling silent and giving the sister the desk must but pinch, a at e wardrob the Well, Gregory could manage without groaning as e, wardrob the with room the left stay. And no sooner had the women his head out from under they flattened themselves against it, than Gregory poked tactfully intervene. As possible as far as and ly the couch to see how he might prudent first, leaving Meg in the other luck would have it, however, his mother came back

to and fro without of course room with her arms around the wardrobe, rocking it sight of him; it might make the to used not was moving it an inch. Now his mother until he was right at the far end her ill; so Gregory scurried backwards in some alarm sheet at the front from swaying of the couch, though he was too late to prevent the short, stood quite still for stopped She eye. s slightly, just enough to catch his mother’ a moment, then went back to Meg. ng out of the ordinary was Although Gregory kept telling himself that nothi moved about, he was soon forced happening, it was only a few bits of furniture being their muttered cries, and the scraping to admit that the women’s to-ing and fro-ing, him like a great turmoil that was being of the furniture on the floor were affecting he drew in his head and legs and pressed fuelled from all sides, and however firmly apable that he was not going to be able his body to the floor the conclusion was inesc ng his room out, taking away everything to put up with it for long. They were cleari other which contained his fret-saw and the that was dear to him; the wardrobe,

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tools, was already gone; now they were freeing his desk from the holes it had dug in the floor, the desk at which as a student of commerce and before that as a schoolboy, in fact ever since his junior-school days, he had sat and laboured over his essays—

no, he simply hadn’t time to scrutinize the good intentions of the two women, whose existence he had in any case almost forgotten since they were now toiling in exhausted silence, and all that could be heard was the heavy tramp of their feet.

The upshot was that he darted from his hiding-place—the women happened to be leaning against the desk in the next room, getting their breath back— changed direction four times, quite unable to decide what to salvage first, then, spotting the picture of the lady all in furs where it hung conspicuously on the otherwise bare wall, quickly crawled up to it and pressed himself against the glass, which offered a firm purchase and did his hot belly good. This picture at least, which Gregory was now completely covering, surely no one would take away from him. He twisted his head round towards the living-room door to observe the women’s return. They had not given themselves much of a rest and were already coming back; Meg had her arm around her mother and was virtually carrying her. “All right, what shall we take next?” she said, looking about her. Then her eyes met Gregory’s up on the wall. Probably only because her mother was there she retained her composure, bent her head closer to her mother to prevent her from looking about her, and said, if with somewhat tremulous haste, “Come, let’s go back in the living-room for a moment,

shall we?” It was dear to Gregory what Meg was up to: she meant to get her mother out of harm’s way and then chase him down from the wall. Well, just let her try! He was sitting on his picture and was not going to part with it. He’d leap off in Meg’s face first. But Meg’s words had served only to increase the mother’s agitation; she now stepped to one side, saw the huge brown blotch on the flowered wallpaper, cried out, before she had really registered the fact that it was Gregory she was looking at, in a shrill, strident voice, “Oh God, oh God!” and with arms outstretched as if giving up altogether fell back on the couch and lay still. “Gregory!” cried his sister, shaking her fist and glaring at him. It was the first time she had addressed him directly since the metamorphosis. She ran into the next room for some sort of essence that might revive her unconscious mother; Gregory wanted to help —time enough later to save the picture—but he was stuck fast to the glass and had to tear himself free; then he too ran into the next room as if there were some advice he could give his sister, like in the old days, but had to stand behind her doing nothing while she rummaged among various bottles, and gave her a fright when she turned round; one bottle fell to the floor and broke; a sliver of glass flew in Gregory’s face, wounding him, and some pungent medicament swirled round him; Meg wasted no more time but gathered up as many bottles as she could and ran with them back to her mother, slamming the door behind her with her foot. Gregory was now cut off from his mother,

who — and it was his fault— might be on the point of death; he could not open the door without frightening away his sister, and she must stay with their mother; there was nothing he could do except wait; and in an agony of anxiety and self-reproach he began to crawl about, all over everything, walls, furniture, ceiling, until eventually, in his despair, with the whole room starting to spin round him, he fell right in

the middle of the big table.

The Metamorphosis, I

For a while Gregory lay there weakly; around him all was silence; possibly that was a good sign. Then there came a ring at the door. The maid was of course locked in her kitchen, so Meg had to go. It was Gregory’s father. “What’s happened?” was the first thing he said; presumably Meg’s appearance had given the game away. Meg answered in a muffled voice, obviously with her face buried against her father’s chest, “Mother fainted but she’s all right now. Gregory’s got out.” “I knew it,” said the father, “I kept telling you it would happen, but you women never listen.” It was clear to Gregory that his father had misinterpreted Meg’s all-too-brief report and assumed that he had been responsible for some act of violence. He must now attempt to placate his father, having neither the time nor the means to put him right. Accordingly he made a run for the door of his room and pressed himself against it in order that his father should see as soon as he entered the living-room that his intentions were of the best, that he was prepared to go back into his room immediately, and that it was not necessary to drive him there but only to open the door, when he would promptly disappear. His father, however, was in no mood to spot such niceties; “Ah!” he cried on

entering, and his tone of voice suggested simultaneous rage and delight. Gregory pulled his head back from the door and swung it round towards his father. The man who stood there bore no resemblance to the mental image Gregory had had of him; admittedly he had neglected of late, through his new-found interest in crawling, to concern himself to the same extent as previously with events in the rest of the flat, and he ought in fact to have been quite prepared to find that things had changed.

wearily in Yes, but, even so, could this really be his father? The same man as had lain

bed, buried in his pillows, when Gregory left on a business trip; had greeted him the from an armchair in his dressing-gown when Gregory returned home in to arms his raising evening; had even found it beyond him to rise to his feet, merely

they went for a indicate that he was pleased; and had, on the rare occasions when

holidays, walk together, on a couple of Sundays a year and on the principal public pretty were they shuffled along between Gregory and his mother, managing, though overcoat, old his in slow walkers themselves, to go a little more slowly still, wrapped to say somealways placing his walking-stick with great care, and, when he wanted escort about his thing had almost invariably come to a complete halt and gathered blue unisevere a in him? Now, however, he was drawn up to his full height; dressed stiff colhigh, the form with gilt buttons of the kind worn by bank commissionaires; eyebrows bushy the lar of his jacket was topped by a powerful double chin; beneath white hair had his piercing dark eyes had a fresh, alert look; the usually dishevelled his cap, which Tossing been meticulously combed down, parted, and brilliantined. across the right it took that bore a gold monogram, probably that ofa bank, in an arc to thrust jacket uniform of his room onto the couch and pushing back the long flaps of grim look a with on Gregory his hands into his trouser pockets, he bore down to do; meant he what himself determination on his face. Probably he did not know at the amazed was and Gregory nevertheless he raised his feet to an unusual height, enormous

dwelt on his amazement, size of the soles of his boots. Not that he

of his new life that his father believed remembering as he did from the very first day severity; no, he fled from his father's the only way to treat him was with the utmost

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advance, stopping whenever his father came to a halt and hurrying on again the moment his father moved. They made several circuits of the room like this without anything decisive happening, indeed without the whole performance, so slowly was it enacted, even having the appearance of a chase. For this reason Gregory also kept to the floor for the time being, especially since he was afraid his father might look upon a retreat to the walls or ceiling as evidence of conspicuous ill will. But he had to admit to himself that he would not be able to keep up even this kind of running for long, because where his father took one step he had to make a whole host of movements. He was beginning to experience difficulty in breathing, and it was a fact that even in his previous life his lungs had never been wholly reliable. As he staggered on, barely keeping his eyes open in order to save all his strength for his legs, not even, in his lethargy, considering any other escape than by running, having already almost forgotten that the walls were at his disposal, though in this room they were cluttered with elaborately carved furniture, all notches and protruberances— something was lobbed gently over his shoulder, struck the floor just in front of him, and rolled away. It was an apple; another went flying after it; Gregory came to a terrified halt, further running being pointless now that his father had decided to bombard him. He had filled his pockets from the fruit bowl on the sideboard and was throwing one apple after another without even taking aim first. The small, red apples rolled around the floor as if electrified, bumping into one another. One feebly tossed apple struck Gregory a glancing blow on the back, doing no damage. But another that came flying after it hit him on the back and sank right in; Gregory tried to drag himself forward as though the shocking, unbelievable pain might go away if he moved; but it was like being pinned to the ground, and he stretched himself out, all his senses a complete blur. The last thing he saw was the door of his room being wrenched open and his mother rushing out past his shrieking sister, in her chemise because his sister had started undressing her to ease her breathing while she was unconscious, rushing up to his father with her tucked-up skirts spilling to the floor one by one as she ran, stumbling over the skirts as she fell upon his father and, with her arms around him,

in absolute union with him—but Gregory’s sight was already failing at this point— her hands cupping the back of his father’s head, begged him to spare Gregory’s life.

Ill The severity of Gregory’s wound, from which he suffered for more than a month— no one daring to remove the apple, it remained lodged in his flesh as a visible reminde — seemed r to have brought home even to his father that, for all his present deplorable and repugnant appearance, Gregory was a member of the family and was therefore not to be treated as an enemy; on the contrary, family duty required them to swallow their loathing and simply grin and bear it. And if in all likelihood Gregory had now, as a result of his injury, permanently lost some of his mobility and for the present resembled an elderly invalid in that it took him endless minutes to cross from one side of his room to the other— crawling on the walls and ceiling being out of the question—he felt fully compensated for this deterioration in his condition by the fact that every evening the door to the

The Metamorphosis, U1

living-room, which he was in the habit of keeping a sharp eye on for as much as an hour or two beforehand, was thrown open and he was allowed to lie in the darkness of his room, invisible from next door, and observe the whole family around the brightly-lit table and listen to their conversation —all this as it were by general consent, in other words under very different circumstances from before.

Gone, of course, were the lively exchanges of earlier days, which Gregory had always recalled with a certain nostalgia in those tiny hotel rooms as he threw his weary body down on yet another damp bed. Now it was mostly a very peaceful time. His father fell asleep in his chair soon after supper; his mother and sister kept reminding each other to be quiet; his mother, leaning forward into the light, sewed lingerie for a fashion shop; his sister, who had taken a job as a shop assistant, spent her evenings learning shorthand and French with a view, possibly, to securing a better position later on. Occasionally his father would wake up, and as if unaware that he had been asleep he would say to the mother, “You're doing a lot of sewing again today!” and go straight back to sleep, while mother and sister exchanged tired smiles. With an almost mulish obstinacy Gregory’s father refused to take off his commissionaire’s uniform even in the house; and while his dressing-gown hung idle on the peg he slept fully dressed in his place at table as if permanently ready for duty, all had ears, even here, for the dictates of his superior. As a result the uniform, which

not been new to start with, defied all Gregory’s mother’s and sister’s efforts to keep it clean, and Gregory often spent whole evenings gazing at the appallingly stained garment, bright with its ever-polished buttons, in which the old man slept in great discomfort and yet at his ease. his As soon as the clock struck ten Gregory’s mother tried by quietly talking to proper father to wake him up and coax him into going to bed, because it was not to sleep that he was getting where he was and sleep was something that, having had that s report for duty at six o'clock, he needed very badly. But with the wilfulnes on stayinsisted y invariabl he job humble this taken had he since characterized him the with only ing up longer, although he regularly dozed off and afterwards it was matter No bed. greatest difficulty that he could be persuaded to exchange chair for es, for a quarreproach mild with him urged sister and mother how much Gregory’s firmly closed, refuster of an hour he went on slowly shaking his head with his eyes ng blandishments ing to stand up. Gregory’s mother plucked at his sleeve, whisperi mother’s aid, but the effect on in his ear, and his sister left her work to go to her

chair. Not until the women Gregory’s father was nil. He only slumped deeper into his from mother to sister, and grasped him under the armpits did he open his eyes, look on the two women, he say, “What a life! So much for a quiet old age!” Then, leaning s burden even to himself, would rise awkwardly to his feet as if he were an enormou wave them away to continue allow the women to escort him to the door, and there her sewing and his sister her on his own, while Gregory’s mother quickly put down e. pen in order to run after him and offer further assistanc time to give Gregory any had family sted exhau and Who in this overworked The housekeeping budget was promore attention than was absolutely necessary? ssed after all; a big, rawboned gressively curtailed; the maid was dismi

cleaning-

ngs and evenings to do the heaviest woman with wispy white hair came in morni

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work; everything else Gregory’s mother took care of, on top of all her sewing. It even reached the point where various pieces of family jewellery, formerly worn with great delight by Gregory’s mother and sister on evenings out and other festive occasions, were sold, as Gregory learnt the same evening when the family discussed the prices fetched. But the main complaint was always that, while the flat was far too big for their present circumstances, they could not leave it because of the insoluble problem of how to move Gregory. Gregory, however, fully appreciated that he was not the only consideration in the way of a move, since it would have been a simple matter to trans-

port him in a suitable crate fitted with a few air-holes; no, what chiefly held the family back from finding a new flat was their feeling of utter despair and the idea that they had been struck by a misfortune exceeding anything ever experienced within their entire circle of friends and relations. What the world requires of poor people they were fulfilling to the last degree; the father fetched breakfast for minor bank officials; the mother sacrificed herself for the underwear of total strangers; the sister ran back and forth behind the counter at her customers’ beck and call; to do any more was beyond the family’s power. And the wound in Gregory’s back began to hurt all over again when his mother and sister, having put his father to bed, came back, left their

work where they had dropped it, moved their chairs closer together until they were sitting cheek to cheek; and when his mother, indicating Gregory’s room, said, “Shut the door now, Meg,” and he was in darkness again, while in the other room the women wept together or possibly sat dry-eyed, staring at the table-top. Gregory's nights and days passed almost entirely without sleep. He thought intermittently of taking the affairs of the family in hand again just as before, the very next time the door opened; after a long interval the boss and the chief clerk reappeared in his thoughts together with the other clerks and the apprentices, the dimwitted errand boy, two or three friends from other firms, a provincial hotel chamber-maid of brief, fond memory, a cashier in a hat shop whom he had courted in earnest but rather too slowly—they all appeared, interspersed with strangers or people he had forgotten, but instead of helping him and his family they were without exception unapproachable and he was glad to see them go. Afterwards, however, he was again in no mood to bother about his family; he was merely angry at the appalling service, and although he could think of nothing he might have felt like eating he began to plan ways of gaining access to the larder, there to help himself to what, even if he was not hungry, was after all no more than his due. With no thought any longer of how she might particularly please Gregory, his sister now hurriedly shoved any old thing into his room with her foot before leaving for work in the morning and again after lunch, and in the evening, regardless of whether the food had perhaps merely been picked at or—as was usually the case—left completely untouched, she swept it out again with a whisk of her broom. The cleaning, which she now always did in the evenings, could not have taken less time. The walls of

Gregory’s room were streaked with dirt, and balls of dust and little heaps of excrement dotted the floor. At the beginning Gregory used to position himself, when his sister arrived, in corners that were particularly bad in this respect, intending his action as a sort of reproach to her. But he could have stayed there for weeks without his sister mending her ways; the fact was, she could see the dirt as clearly as he could,

The Metamorphosis, I

only she had made up her mind to leave it. At the same time she watched with, for her, a quite novel sensitivity—it had come over the whole family, in fact—that the cleaning of Gregory’s room should remain her prerogative. On one occasion Gregory’s mother had subjected his room to a major spring-clean, which, had taken several buckets of water to complete successfully—all the humidity upsetting Gregory too, of course, so that he flopped down on the couch ina sulk and lay still— but she did not go unpunished. As soon as Gregory’s sister saw the change in his room that evening she ran into the living-room, deeply hurt, and despite her mother’s imploringly upraised hands burst into a paroxysm of tears of which her parents— the father had of course started up out of his chair in alarm —were at first astonished and helpless witnesses; until they too began to get excited; father upbraiding mother to his right for not leaving the cleaning of the room to Gregory's sister; and to his left yelling at the sister that she would never be allowed to clean Gregory’s room again; while Gregory’s mother tried to drag his father, who was beside himself with rage, into the bedroom; his sister, shaking with sobs, pounded the table with her little fists; and Gregory himself hissed aloud in his fury at the fact that no one thought of shutting the door and sparing him this noisy scene. But even if his sister, exhausted from her day’s work, had had enough of looking after Gregory as she had once done, there was still no need for Gregory's mother to have taken her place and still no reason why Gregory should be neglected. For now the cleaning-woman was there. This elderly widow, whose powerful build had presumably helped her to weather the worst in the course of her long life, had no particular horror of Gregory. Without as it were being nosy she had once inadvertently opened the door of Gregory’s room, and at the sight of Gregory, who was taken completely by surprise and began running to and fro although no one was chasing her. Since him, she had stood there in amazement with her hands clasped before the door a then she had not let a day go by without, morning and evening, opening him to her, crack and peeping in at Gregory. The first few times she had also called old dung using words she probably regarded as affable, such as “Come on, you in this fashion, beetle, come over here!” or “Look at the old dung beetle!” Addressed

as though the Gregory had made no reply but stayed where he was without moving plague him to no door had never been opened. If only, instead of letting the woman his room out every day! purpose as the mood took her, they had told her to clean coming of spring, was One early morning—heavy rain, possibly in token of the the cleaning-woman beating at the window-panes— Gregory felt so bitter when very slowly and rather started using those words again that he turned, though the cleaning-woman decrepitly, as if to attack her. Instead of taking fright, however, air, and from the way in merely picked up a nearby chair and raised it high in the was clear that she would shut her which she stood there with her mouth wide open it down on Gregory's back. mouth only when the chair in her hand had come crashing turned away again; then she “You keep your distance, all right?” she asked as Gregory calmly put the chair back in the corner. when he happened to walk past Gregory was now eating almost nothing. Only a bite, which he kept in his mouth the food put down for him did he aimlessly take first he thought it was sadness at the for hours and then usually spat out again. At

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state of his room that had spoilt his appetite, but in fact the changes in his room were something to which he became reconciled very quickly. They had got into the habit of putting in with him things that could not be accommodated elsewhere, and there were now a great many such things because they had let one room of the flat to three lodgers. These earnest gentlemen —all three wore full beards, as Gregory discovered on one occasion through a crack in the door—were sticklers for order, not only in their room but also, now that they were installed as lodgers, as far as the whole house-

hold was concerned, which meant particularly the kitchen. They had no time for useless junk and even less if it was dirty. Moreover they had brought most of their furniture with them. As a result, many things had become superfluous for which there was no market but which on the other hand no one wanted to throw away. All of them found their way into Gregory’s room, as did the ash bucket and the rubbish bin from the kitchen. Everything that was temporarily out of use the cleaning-woman, who was always in a great hurry, simply flung into Gregory’s room; Gregory was usually lucky enough to see only the object in question and the hand holding it. The cleaning-woman may have meant to fetch the things again when she had a moment or throw them all out at one go; in fact they stayed where they had landed, except when Gregory forced a path through the stuff and shifted it, at first because he had to, there being no other space for crawling, but subsequently with ever-increasing pleasure, although the aftermath of such expeditions was that he relapsed, dead-tired and in a mood of deep gloom, into hours of lying without moving. As the lodgers sometimes had supper at home as well, eating in the communal living-room, there were evenings when the living-room door stayed shut, but Gregory found it quite easy to forgo the opening of the door; there had already been evenings when, with the door open, he had not taken advantage of the fact but had lain motionless in the darkest corner of his room, unnoticed by the family. On one

occasion, however, the cleaning-woman having left the door to the living-room ajar, it stayed that way and was still ajar when the lodgers came home in the evening and the lamp was lit. They sat down at the head of the table, where Gregory’s father and mother and Gregory himself had formerly eaten, unfolded their napkins, and picked up their knives and forks. Promptly Gregory’s mother appeared in the doorway with a dish of meat and right behind her his sister with another dish piled high with potatoes. Steam rose thickly from both. The lodgers bent over the dishes as they were placed in front of them; it was as if they wanted to inspect the food before eating it, and indeed the one in the middle, evidently an authority in the eyes of the other two, actually cut through a piece of meat while it was still on the dish, clearly in order to establish whether it was done or whether it should perhaps be sent back to the kitchen. He was satisfied, and Gregory's mother and sister, who had been watching apprehensively, broke into relieved smiles. The family ate in the kitchen. Gregory’s father, however, before going to the kitchen, came into the living-room and with a bow, cap in hand, made a tour of the table. The lodgers rose as one man and mumbled something into their beards. Afterwards, when they were alone, they ate in almost complete silence. It struck Gregory as odd that, of all the multifarious sounds of eating, the one that stood out most persistently was the champing of their teeth; it was as if they meant to show him

The Metamorphosis, 11

that one needed teeth to eat and that even the finest of toothless jaws were good for nothing. “I do feel like eating,” Gregory said worriedly to himself, “but not these things. The way these lodgers stuff themselves —and I’m starving!” remember hearing it once during not could That same evening—and Gregory the kitchen. The lodgers had from came the whole time—the sound of the violin and given the other newspaper a finished their supper, the middle one had produced reading and smokchairs, their in back two a page each, and they were now leaning and tiptoed to feet, their to got up, ing. When the violin began to play they looked must have movements Their together. the hall doorway, where they stood huddled gentlethe “Would out, called father been audible in the kitchen because Gregory’s “On immediately.” stopped be can It men perhaps rather not have the violin played? here in come to like not lady young the contrary,’ said the middle lodger, “would the and play in the living-room where it’s much cosier and more relaxed?” “Why, certainly!” cried Gregory’s father as if he had been the violinist. The lodgers came back into the room and waited. Soon Gregory’s father entered with the music stand, his mother with the music, and his sister with the violin. His sister calmly got everything ready to play; his parents, who had never let rooms before and consequently overdid the politeness towards their lodgers, dared not even sit in their own chairs; Gregory's livfather leant against the door, his right hand inserted between two buttons of his where down sat lodgers, the of one ery jacket; his mother, however, offered a chair by the gentleman had happened to put it, which was tucked away in a corner. side Gregory's sister began to play, while his father and mother, one on each her by Drawn . attention close of her, followed the movements of her hands with livingthe inside was head his until playing, Gregory ventured forward a little way so little regard room. He gave scarcely a thought to the fact that he had been showing And now altruism. his on himself for others recently, whereas before he had prided the dust of result a as because, sight there was even more reason for his staying out of he too nce, disturba slightest the at that lay everywhere in his room and blew about food left-over of scraps and hairs, was covered in dust; he dragged lengths of thread, as do to r altogethe apathetic too far around with him on his back and flanks; he was rub and back his on lie to was he had previously done several times a day, which ns about edging forhimself on the carpet. Yet in spite of it all he had no inhibitio ward onto the spotless floor of the living-room. was completely absorbed Not that anyone paid any attention to him. The family stationing themselves, by begun in the violin-playing; the lodgers, however, having where they could all stand music hands in pockets, much too close behind his sister’s muttering to retired soon sister, his see the score, which must surely have bothered Gregory’s by sly anxiou ed watch the window and stood there with heads lowered, hearing of ation expect their in father. It now looked very much as if, disappointed perwhole the with up fed were they some beautiful or entertaining violin-playing, politeof out only r furthe bed distur formance and were allowing their peace to be their cigar smoke into the air out of blew all they which in way the ness. Particularly degree of irritation. Yet his sister was nose and mouth together suggested a high to one side; her eyes had a sad, searching playing so beautifully. Her face was tilted Gregory crawled a little farther into the look as they followed the lines of the score.

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room and pressed his head to the floor in the hope of perhaps meeting her gaze. Could he really be an animal, if music affected him so deeply? He felt as if he were being shown the way to that food he so longed for without knowing what it was. He was determined to reach his sister and suggest by tugging at her skirt that she should bring her violin and come into his room, because no one here was rewarding her playing as he wished to reward it. He wanted to keep her in his room and not let her go, at least not while he lived; for the first time his nightmarish appearance would serve some useful purpose; he meant to be at all the doors of his room simultaneously and spit in his attackers’ faces; his sister, though, must not be coerced but must stay with him of her own free will; she should sit beside him on the couch and lower her ear to his mouth, and he would then confide to her that it had been his firm intention to send her to the Conservatory and that if this mishap had not intervened he would have told everyone so at Christmas— presumably Christmas had already passed —and would have turned a deaf ear to any objections. Following this declaration his sister would burst into tears of emotion and Gregory would lift himself up to the level of her shoulder and kiss her bare neck, for since she had been going out to work she had worn neither neckband nor collars. “Mr Samsa!” the middle lodger cried, addressing Gregory’s father and pointing, without another word, at the slowly advancing Gregory. The music stopped; the middle lodger looked at his friends with a smile and a shake of the head before turning back to Gregory. Gregory’s father seemed to feel that getting rid of Gregory was less urgent for the moment than reassuring the lodgers, although the lodgers, far from being upset, appeared to be deriving more amusement from Gregory than they had from the violin-playing. He hurried over to them and tried by spreading his arms to drive them into their room, at the same time using his body in an attempt to block their view of Gregory. At this they did in fact turn a little nasty, though there was no knowing whether it was because of the father’s behaviour or because of the realization now dawning on them that they had unwittingly had such a creature as Gregory for a next-door neighbour. They demanded explanations of Gregory’s father, their own arms flew up, they plucked nervously at their beards and only slowly gave ground in the retreat to their room. Meanwhile his sister had recovered from the forlorn mood into which she had lapsed following the abrupt interruption of her playing; after dangling violin and bow loosely in her hands for a while and continuing to gaze at the score as if she were still playing, she had suddenly pulled herself together, laid the instrument in her mother’s lap where she sat fighting for breath with labouring lungs, and run into the next room, which the lodgers, driven on by Gregory's father, were now approaching more rapidly. Quilts and pillows could be seen flying into the air and falling back into place, guided by his sister’s practised hands. Before the lodgers even reached the room she had finished making the beds and slipped out again. Gregory’s father appeared to have fallen a prey to his own obstinacy once more, this time to the point of forgetting completely the respect that, after all, he owed his paying guests. He kept driving them on and driving them on until, right in the doorway of the room, the middle lodger stamped his foot with a sound like thunder and stopped Gregory’s father in his tracks. “I hereby give

The Metamorphosis, UI

notice,” he said with upraised hand, looking round to include Gregory’s mother and sister as well, “that in view of the disgusting circumstances obtaining in this flat and in this family” —here he suddenly decided to spit on the floor—“I intend to quit my room immediately. I shall not of course pay a thing for the days I have already spent in residence here; on the contrary, I shall be considering whether to lodge a— believe me—very easily justifiable claim against you for damages.” He stopped talking and looked straight ahead of him as if waiting for something. And indeed his two friends chimed in promptly with the words, “We too give notice as of now.” At that he seized the door handle and slammed the door. Gregory's father groped his way to his chair and slumped into it; he might have been stretching out for his customary evening nap, except that the violent nodding of his head, almost as though it had come loose, showed that he was anything but asleep. All this time Gregory had been lying motionless where the lodgers had first spotted him. Disappointment at the failure of his plan but perhaps also the weakness brought on by prolonged starvation had robbed him of all possibility of movement. Dreading with a kind of certainty that a general state of collapse was about to break over him at any moment, he waited. Not even the violin alarmed him when, having slipped from his mother’s trembling fingers, it fell from her lap and hit the floor with a loud, ringing sound. “My dear parents,” said Gregory’s sister, banging her hand down on the table by way of an introduction, “we can’t go on like this. I see that even if you perhaps don't. I refuse to utter my brother’s name in front of this creature, so all I say is: we must try to get rid of it. We've tried our level best to look after it and put up with it, and I believe no one can reproach us in the slightest.” “She’s right, by God,” Gregory’s father said to himself. His mother, who had still a crazed not managed to get her breath back, now puta hand to her mouth and with hollowly. coughing look in her eyes began His father His sister hurried over to her and put a hand on her forehead. girl’s words; he appeared to have been set thinking along more specific lines by the that still lay had sat up in his chair and was playing with his cap among the plates at the motionless on the table from the lodgers’ supper, casting occasional glances Gregory. addressing only his “We must somehow get rid of it,” said Gregory's sister, now ng, “or it will be the father because the mother could hear nothing above her coughi to work as hard as we do death of you both, I can see it coming. When people have either.” And she burst they cannot take this everlasting worry at home as well. I can’t her mother’s face, from which «nto such floods of tears that they splahed down onto hands. she wiped them with perfunctory movements of her evident understanding, “what with and gly pityin “But, my child,” said her father are we to do?” token of the perplexity that Gregory’s sister merely shrugged her shoulders in her earlier assurance. had come over her with her tears, contrasting with began half wonderingly, but father ry’s Grego “Tf he understood what we said,” show that it was out of the question. his sister, still weeping, waved a hand violently to

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“If he understood what we said,” Gregory’s father repeated as, by closing his eyes, he took in the girl’s conviction that this was impossible, “we might perhaps be able to come to an arrangement with him. But as things are...” “Tt has to go,” his sister cried. “It’s the only way, Father. You must just try to get out of the habit of thinking it’s Gregory. That’s been our undoing, in fact, that we've believed it for so long. But how can it be Gregory? If it were he would long ago have seen the impossibility of people living in the same house as such an animal and would have gone away of his own accord. In which case we would have no brother but could at least go on living and could honour his memory. As it is, the brute persecutes us, drives away the lodgers, and clearly means to take over the whole flat and have us sleeping out on the street. Look, Father,’ she screamed suddenly, “there he goes again!” And in a state of panic that Gregory found quite incomprehensible she even left her mother’s side, actually using the back of the chair to push herself off as though she would rather sacrifice her mother than remain in Gregory's vicinity, and dashed behind her father, who then, prompted purely by her reaction, also stood up and half raised his arms in front of the girl as though to protect her. But of course nothing was further from Gregory’s mind than to try to inspire fear in anyone, let alone his sister. He had simply begun to turn himself round in order to make his way back to his room, only it looked rather spectacular because in his ailing condition he had to help this difficult process along with his head by repeatedly lifting it in the air and bringing it down on the floor with a bang. He stopped and looked round. Apparently they had recognized that he meant well; the alarm had been only a momentary one. Now they were looking at him in sad-eyed silence. His mother was lying in her chair with her legs outstretched and pressed together, so exhausted that she could barely keep her eyes open; his father and sister were sitting together, she with one arm draped round his father’s neck. “I suppose it’s all right to turn round now,’ thought Gregory, and he went back to work. He could not help panting with the effort, and every now and then he had to pause for a rest. Not that anyone put him under pressure: it was all left to him. As soon as he had completed his turn he set off in a straight line. He was amazed at the enormous distance separating him from his room and could not understand how in his enfeebled state he had made the same journey almost without realizing it a short while before. Concentrating entirely on crawling fast, he hardly noticed the fact that not a word, not a cry from any member of his family disturbed his progress. Not until he had reached the doorway did he turn his head, and then not completely because he could feel his neck becoming stiff; nevertheless he saw that behind him nothing had changed except that his sister had risen to her feet. His last glimpse was of his mother, now fast asleep. Almost before he was inside his room the door was hurriedly pushed to, bolted,

and locked. The sudden noise behind him frightened Gregory so much that his legs gave way. It was his sister who had been in such a hurry. She had been on her feet, already, waiting; she had then sprung forward nimbly—Gregory had not even heard her coming—and, with a cry of “At last!” for her parents’ benefit, she had turned the key in the lock.

The Metamorphosis, UI

“Now what?” Gregory asked himself as he looked about him in the darkness. He quite soon discovered that he could no longer move at all. He was not surprised; in fact what struck him as unnatural was that he had actually been able to get about until then on such thin legs. Otherwise he felt comparatively comfortable. Admittedly he hurt all over, but he had the impression that the pains were gradually becoming fainter and fainter and would eventually go away together. The rotten apple in his back and the inflamed area around it, now completely covered with a soft dust, were almost forgotten. He recalled his family with sympathy and love. His own belief that he must go was if possible even firmer than his sister’s. He remained in this state of vacant and peaceable reflection until the church clock struck three in the morning. He lived to see the first signs of the general brightening outside the window. Then, independently of his will, his head sank to the floor and his last

breath streamed feebly from his nostrils. — out of sheer, bustling When the cleaning-woman arrived in the early morning energy she slammed all the doors, no matter how often she had been asked not to, so hard that throughout the flat, from the moment

of her arrival onwards, peaceful

sleep was an impossibility—she noticed nothing out of the ordinary about Gregory at first on her customary brief visit. She thought he was deliberately lying so still, playing the injured party; she credited him with boundless intelligence. Happening to have the long-handled broom in her hand, she tried to tickle Gregory with it from the door. When even this was unsuccessful she lost patience and gave Gregory a little prod, and it was only when she had shifted him from his place without encountering any resistance that her attention was aroused. She was quick to grasp the true state of affairs, reacting with a look of surprise and a low whistle; then, without wasting any more time, she tore open the bedroom door and bellowed into the darkness within,

“Take a look at this —the thing’s snuffed it! It’s lying here dead as a doornail!” The Samsas were sitting up in the matrimonial bed and had first to overcome regtheir alarm at the cleaning-woman’s irruption before there was any question of of out quickly got Samsa Mrs and Mr however, Then, ment. istering her announce Samsa Mrs shoulders, his round quilt the throwing Samsa Mr bed, one on each side, e wearing only her nightdress; thus attired, they entered Gregory’s room. Meanwhil moved lodgers the since sleeping been had Meg where om, the door to the living-ro been to bed, in, had also opened; Meg was fully dressed as though she had not even looking Samsa, Mrs said “Dead?” confirm. to seemed face an impression her pale herself g everythin verify could she although -woman inquiringly up at the cleaning -woman, cleaning the said so,” reckon “I on. verificati and even see for herself without shove with the and to prove it she gave Gregory's corpse another great sideways broom but did not do broom. Mrs Samsa made as if to put a restraining hand on the crossed himself, and the three so. “Well,” said Mr Samsa, “thanks be to God.” He

said, “See how thin women followed his example. Meg, her eyes fixed on the corpse, The food used to come out he was. Well, he hadn't eaten anything for ages, had he? y flat and dried out, exactly as it had gone in.” Gregory’s body was indeed completel legs and there was nothas could be seen only now that it was no longer raised on its eye. ing else about it to distract the

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KAFKA

“Meg, come into our room for a moment,” said Mrs Samsa, smiling wistfully, and Meg, not without a backward glance at the corpse, followed her parents into their bedroom. The cleaning-woman closed the door and opened the window wide. Despite the earliness of the hour the fresh air already held a trace of mildness, for by this time it was the end of March. The three lodgers emerged from their room and stared about them in astonishment, looking for their breakfast; they had been forgotten. “Where’s our breakfast?”

the middle lodger gruffly demanded of the cleaning-woman. But she put a finger to her lips and in silence gestured quickly to the lodgers to come into Gregory’s room. They came, and in the already quite bright room, with their hands in the pockets of their somewhat threadbare jackets, they stood around Gregory’s corpse. Then the bedroom door opened and Mr Samsa appeared in his livery, his wife on one arm and his daughter on the other. They were all slightly red-eyed from crying, Meg occasionally pressing her face against her father’s arm. “Get out of my flat this instant,” said Mr Samsa, pointing to the door without

letting go of the women. “How do you mean?” said the middle lodger, stunned but managing a honeyed smile. The other two had their hands behind their backs and were rubbing them together as if in delighted anticipation of a major row that, moreover, promised to turn out in their favour. “I mean precisely what I say,” replied Mr Samsa, and with his two escorts he began to walk straight towards the middle lodger. The latter made no move at first but stood looking at the floor as if things were falling into a fresh pattern in his mind. “All right, we'll go,” he concluded, looking up at Mr Samsa as though, in a sudden access of humility, he were even seeking fresh approval for this decision. Mr Samsa merely nodded curtly several times, glaring at him. Sure enough, the lodger promptly turned and strode out into the hall. His two friends, who had stopped rubbing their hands and started listening intently some time ago, now went literally scurrying after him as if afraid that Mr Samsa might reach the hall before them and cut them off from their leader. Out in the hall all three of them took their hats from the hat stand, drew their sticks from the stick

rack, bowed silently, and left the flat. Prompted by what turned out to be a quite unfounded distrust, Mr Samsa stepped out onto the landing with the two women; there they leant on the banister and watched the three gentlemen slowly but surely descending the long stairwell, disappearing at a particular turn of the staircase between each floor and reemerging a moment or two later; the lower they went, the more the Samsa family lost interest in them, and as a butcher’s man passed them coming up and then climbed high above them, proudly bearing his tray on his head, Mr Samsa soon left the landing with the women, and they went back into their flat as though relieved. They decided to spend the day resting and going for a walk. They had not only earned this break from work; they needed it, and needed it badly. So they sat down at the table and wrote three letters of apology, Mr Samsa to his superiors, Mrs Samsa to the man who sent her needlework, and Meg to the proprietor of the shop she served in. While they were writing, the cleaning-woman came in to say that she was going since her morning work was done. The three letter-writers merely nodded at first without looking up; only when the cleaning-woman continued to show no sign of

The Metamorphosis, U1

leaving did they look up in some irritation. “Well?” Mr Samsa asked. The cleaningwoman stood smiling in the doorway as though she had some excellent news to announce to the family but would surrender it only on being quizzed at length. The little ostrich feather that stood up almost vertically from her hat and had been a source of irritation to Mr Samsa throughout her period of service bobbed and dipped in all directions. “What was it you wanted?” asked Mrs Samsa, who was the person for whom the cleaning-woman still had most respect. “Yes, well,” the cleaningwoman replied before a peal of amiable laughter prevented her from continuing for a moment, “if you were worrying about how to get rid of that rubbish next door, you needn't. It’s already dealt with.” Mrs Samsa and Meg bent over their letters as if to go on writing; Mr Samsa, realizing that the cleaning-woman now intended to launch into a full description, countered with a resolutely outstretched hand. Prevented from telling her story, she recalled the great hurry she was in, and with a clearly offended “Bye, all,” she whirled round and left the flat amid a fearful banging of doors. “She'll be getting her notice this evening,” said Mr Samsa, but neither his wife nor his daughter offered any response, the cleaning-woman having apparently shattered their so recently acquired peace of mind once more. They got up, crossed to the window, and stood with their arms around each other. Mr Samsa turned in his chair to face them and watched them in silence for a while. Then he called out, “Look, come over here. Forget about the past, can’t you? And have a bit of consideration for me.” The women obeyed him immediately, hurrying over to him, caressing him, and quickly finishing their letters. Afterwards the three of them left the flat together, which was something they had not done for months, and took the tram out into the country. They had the carriage in to themselves, and it was full of warmth and sunlight. Leaning back comfortably revealed to be their seats, they discussed their prospects, which closer examination

d not at all bad, because all three employments—and they had never really questione as far as ly particular and, one another about this before—were most advantageous improvement the future was concerned, very promising indeed. The chief immediate accommodaof change ‘n their situation could of course be expected from a simple same time the at was that tion; they now wanted to take a smaller, less expensive flat Gregory which one, present better located and altogether more practical than their daughtheir watching had found. As they discussed these things Mr and Mrs Samsa, realizathe by ously ter become increasingly animated, were struck almost simultane had drained the colour from tion that in recent months, despite all the troubles that

girl. Speaking more her cheeks, she had blossomed into a beautiful, full-bosomed glances, they through quietly now, and communicating almost unconsciously round for looking start must thought about how the time was also coming when they newfound their of ion a nice husband for her. And they saw it as a sort of confirmat their daughter was the journey, the of end the at when, intentions dreams and good first to stand up, stretching her young body.

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Modernism

p. 1386

Nearly all the characteristics of modernist literature that we associate with the works of writers such as Franz Kafka can be found in the literature of the nineteenth century. The Romantics portrayed the artist as a lonely figure alienated from the rest of mankind. Flaubert hid the writer behind the objectivity of his text. Nietzsche declared that God had died, and Dostoevsky explored the implications of the funeral. The symbolist poets abandoned Victorian didacticism and adopted a formal aestheticism. And in the final decades of the century novelists turned away from the social panoramas explored by the great novelists of the nineteenth century to focus on the inner worlds of their characters. So literary historians have variously asserted that modernism began with the Romantic rejection of classicism, with Flaubert defining the canons of realism, with the

disillusionment following the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) or with the turn in the novel away from Victorian

p. 1365

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conventions. The term modernism, however, is used most often to describe the work of writers who emerged at about the time of World War I whose work brings together many of these characteristics. The horror and devastation of the war shattered belief in a stable, meaningful, and ordered existence and seemed to confirm the disillusioning perspectives of Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche. Many writers and artists were convinced that Western culture was in decline and that a new era was about to begin. New theories in the fields of psychology, science, and philosophy fostered a growing uncertainty about the nature of reality, and writers experimented with new ways to reflect this suddenly unfamiliar world. Virginia Woolf, for example, claimed in

Introduction

TIME

AND

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|

Twentieth-Century America: The Armory Show Modernism in the visual arts entered United States in the Armory Show in in 1913, perhaps the most notorious bition in American history. Although

the New York art exhithe show

included about thirteen hundred works, most

of them by established and conventional artists, the furor was caused by the European modernists, painters like Pablo Picasso, Henri

Matisse, Paul Gauguin, and Wassily Kandinsky. Their works shocked the American public who were used to conventional realism. The primitivism of Gauguin; the “childish, crude, and

amateurish” work, as one critic put it, by Matisse; and the fragmented images of the cubists offended viewers who described these paintings as “nasty, lewd, immoral, and indecent.” Even ex-President Theodore Roosevelt became an art critic, commenting, “There is no

reason why people should not call themselves Cubists, or Octogonists, Parallelopipedonists, or Knights of the Isosceles Triangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is fatuous as another.” The painting in the show that proved most offensive was Marcel Duchamp’s cubist classic Nude Descending a Staircase, depicting several fragmented figures superimposed sequentially to give the sense of motion. Picasso said that cubism depicted “not what you see, but what you know is there,” giving the painter’s own inner vision primacy as the subject ofa painting. Like the modernist writers who retreated from the panoramic

ae

Le

This example of Kandinsky’s work was painted only two years before the Wassily Kandinsky, Composition 4, 1911

famous Armory Show of 1913. His later works became even more abstract and expressionistic. (The Art Archive)

realism of the great social novels of the nineteenth century —works like Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848) or Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1865-69) — the painters turned away from the popular literary and historical subjects to portray the painter’s inner vision. The works of the cubists fragmented their subjects into discontinuous images, like the images in a dream, but the cubist abstractions were not

the most revolutionary works in the show. A painting by the Russian Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation No. 27, took modernism a logical step further by depicting brightly colored images that had no referent in the real world at all. Kandinsky said the images came from his unconscious mind and the painting was perhaps the first example of what later would come to be called abstract expressionism.

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her 1924 essay “Character in Fiction” that “the Edwardian tools are the

wrong ones for us to use.” Breaking away from what she deemed the “materialist” conventions of her predecessors, Woolf insisted that

fiction must focus not on the external world and its trappings of setting and plot but on the interior reality of characters’ thoughts, perceptions, and emotions. In “Modern Fiction,” she asserted the central tenet of modernism:

Look within. ... Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From

all sides they come, an incessant show of innumerable atoms; and

as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old... . Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

To capture that “luminous halo,” Woolf developed a stream-ofconsciousness technique that presented the inner life of her characters. Other writers experimented in different ways. T. S. Eliot’s P: 1434

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” exhibits what would

become Eliot’s stylistic trademarks: disconnected lines, ironic side comments, colloquialisms mixed with fragments of past masters, like Shakespeare, and animal or fish imagery. Prufrock’s world, if not

as radical as Kafka’s, in which a man can awaken one morning as a pitiable beetle, is nevertheless modern, decadent, despairing, and sad. DREAM THEORY

p. 1429

The avatar and catalyst for modernism’s inward turn was Sigmund Freud (1856-1937), the Viennese physician who applied scientific

procedures to describe the hidden and unobserved dimensions of the human psyche. Freud was particularly interested in phenomena that were previously unexplained or ignor — bizarre ed events, dreams, jokes, and slips of the tongue, for example. From his observations and clinical practice treating hysteria, he mapped the realm of the unconscious and its connections to the conscious,

rational side of human nature. Freud himself was an important writer and many of his essays have become literary classics. His most

Introduction

Marc Chagall, land

the Village, ig

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a

celebrated painter of the modernist era whose work is often difficult to categorize. The overlapping dreamlike images in this painting typify surrealism while the geometry suggests

cubism. (© Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA /Art Resource. © 2007 Artist Rights Society [ARS], New York/ADAGP, Paris)

influential scientific work was probably The Interpretation of Dreams (1899); many of his more speculative and philosophic later essays, like Totem and Tabu (1913), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), and Moses and Monotheism (1939), have a more literary cast. Freud’s work also influenced nearly

all of the writers of his time. His discovery of the importance of sexuality in the development of the individual led novelists like D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and James Joyce (1882-1941) to openly

treat human sexuality. More broadly, he suggested new ways to nuity understand symbols, narrative point of view, plot, and disconti

in narrative. His influence on twentieth-century literature was pervasive, often unrecognized by the writers who were indebted to his pioneering work for the inward turn in theirs. More than anything else, perhaps, it was Freud’s interest in ced dreams, developed in The Interpretation of Dreams, that influen ic his contemporaries. Writers sought to represent the symbol their explain to content and discontinuous narrative of dreams and and characters through their dream life. The selection from Origin

dream theory Development of Psycho-Analysis summarizes Freud’s ogy. and explains the importance of dreams in his psychol

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Kafka shares with Freud an interest in the bizarre, the absurdities, and the discontinuities of dream. Although Kafka considered psychoanalysis “a helpless error,” many critics have found Freudian ideas very helpful in understanding his stories. Kafka himself, speaking of The Metamorphosis, said that “the terror of art is that the dream reveals the reality.” His comment would seem to support readings of the story that take the beetle as Gregor’s nightmare self-projection, even though Kafka’s matter-of-fact narrative style resists symbolic interpretation. Japanese novelist and playwright Abe Kobo has often been compared to Kafka, for his stories also involve bizarre twists, black

p. 1442

The tone that I even-

tually used in One

humor, and nightmare situations narrated in a matter-of-fact style. “The Red Cocoon” presents a metamorphosis in which is transformed into a hollow cocoon. Narrated by the cocoon the symbolic implications of this change are left unexplained

realistic a man himself, as the

story ends with black humor, the narrator noting that he has been

tossed into a child’s toy box.

Hundred Years of Solitude was based on

the way my grandmother used to tell stories. She told things that sounded

supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with

complete naturalness. .. . What was

most important was the expression she had on her face. She

did not change her expression at all

when telling her stories and everyone was surprised. In

previous attempts to write, | tried to tell

SURREALISM

Other writers were quick to assimilate Freudian dream theory. The surrealists, who sought a “super reality” that transcended the limitations of the rational and realistic, found in dreams expressions of the unconscious that offered the key to such mystical transcendence. André Breton (p. 1438), in The Surrealist Manifesto (1924), extends

Freud’s dream work to a spiritual dimension, finding in the spontaneity and “realities” of dreams the keys not simply to understanding the waking life but to go beyond it. Although surrealism was short-lived as a literary movement, it has influenced many writers who include dreams, dream images, and discontinuous symbolism in their work. Examples in this anthology include Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Aimé Césaire.

the story without believing in it. I discovered that what I had to do was believe

in them myself and write them with the

same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face. — GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

MAGICAL REALISM

Influenced by European modernism, the writers of the magical realist movement in Latin America used realistic techniques to narrate stories that link mundane with miraculous or supernatural events. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s story of an angel who appears in a rural village encapsulates his realistic technique in the title of the story that reduces the miraculous angel to “A Very Old Man with

Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939 Cover of Minotaure, 1934

André Breton was

involved in the

publication ofseveral journals including Minotaure, which

ran from 1933 to 1939.

A lavish publication in its time, the journal featured original works by artists such as Pablo

Picasso and Salvador Dali. (The Art Archive)

Enormous Wings.” The story itself objectively describes the ways in which the villagers deal with and finally turn their backs on the dreamlike situation of a supernatural visitation.

Qw~

SIGMUND

FREUD

B. AUSTRIA, 1856-1939 Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, did not discover the uncon-

the unconscious mind, nor did he discover sex, but his writings made

scious and sex central to the twentieth century’s understanding of human represnature. He shocked the world with his theories of infant sexuality, into journey the sion, sublimation, and the Oedipus complex. He made of childhood, the self, into the hidden and repressed corridors and closets

influence on a paradigm of the modern spiritual journey. He was a major Carl Jung, who took Freudianism

in a somewhat

different direction,

religion for rediscovering the importance of mythology and comparative now a part are legacy Freud’s of subsequent generations. Certain aspects the value life, own one’s of charge taking of daily life: the importance of

of one’s past of the inward journey, the necessity for healing the traumas life with counseling, support groups, and storytelling. a

rg in Moravi Born of Jewish parents on May 6, 1856, at Freibu of his life in most spent Freud ic), (a region today in the Czech Republ

p. 1445

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Vienna. Given the importance Freud later placed on childhood, it is ironic that very little is known about his. In fact, he destroyed large numbers of documents in order to frustrate inquisitive biographers. He began his university studies in 1873, gravitating toward medicine. After studying medicine, with a specialty in neurology, he went to Paris in 1885 to study hysteria under the neurologist Jean Charcot. A Viennese physician, Josef Breuer, gave Freud the key for therapeutic healing. He told Freud about curing the symptoms of hysteria by “getting the patient to recollect in hypnosis the circumstances of their origin and to express the emotions accompanying them.” Freud tried out the method, and together they published a book on

Portrait of

what they called the “cathartic method”; Studien iiber Hysterie (1895) was the starting point of psychoanalysis. Freud discovered that hypnosis was

Sigmund Freud

The father ofpsychoanalysis, Freud made contributions to psychology and culture that still resonate today.

not a satisfactory tool for treating hysteria, so he developed free association and dream analysis as ways to explore the unconscious. Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1899, revolutionized our understanding of the mind and quickly became a classic of scientific literature. After 1923 Freud applied his psychoanalytic theories to culture, making significant contributions to anthropology, education, sociology, art, and literature. Recently Freud’s theories have come under a great deal of criticism, especially in the area of women’s psychology, but his pioneering efforts in the area of the unconscious are invaluable.

(The Art Archive/

Museum der Stadt Wien/Dagli Orti [A])

In lay terms, Freud rediscovered the importance of childhood and

emphasized that childhood experiences continue to influence individuals in their adult lives. His psychoanalytic method proposed that neurosis could be healed when traumatic experiences that have been repressed or denied are recovered as an individual reconstructs his or her personal history. In literary terms, Freud validated the importance of storytelling by maintaining that the painful effects of early abuse can be alleviated when an individual learns how to tell his or her story. He also changed the way stories were told, as the process of discontinuous recall replaced the chronological narratives of the nineteenth century.

FROM

Ow

Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis Translated by Harry W. Chase

THIRD LECTURE

Interpretation of dreams is in fact the via regia’ to the interpretation of the unconscious, the surest ground of psycho-analysis and a field in which every worker must win his convictions and gain his education. If I were asked how one could become a psycho-analyst, I should answer, through the study of his own dreams. With great tact all opponents of the psycho-analytic theory have so far either evaded ‘via regia: The proper way.

Freud: Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis

any criticism of The Interpretation of Dreams” or have attempted to pass over it with the most superficial objections. If, on the contrary, you will undertake the solution of the problems of dream life, the novelties which psycho-analysis present to your thoughts will no longer be difficulties. You must remember that our nightly dream productions show the greatest outer similarity and inner relationship to the creations of the insane, but on the

other hand are compatible with full health during waking life. It does not sound at all absurd to say that whoever regards these normal sense illusions, these delusions and alterations of character as matter for amazement instead of understanding, has not the least prospect of understanding the abnormal creations of diseased mental states in any other than the lay sense. You may with confidence place in this lay group all the psychiatrists of today. Follow me now on a brief excursion through the field of dream problems. In our waking state we usually treat dreams with as little consideration as the patient treats the irruptive ideas which the psycho-analyst demands from him. It is evident that we reject them, for we forget them quickly and completely. The slight valuation which we place on them is based, with those dreams that are not confused and nonsensical, on the feeling that they are foreign to our personality, and, with

other dreams, on their evident absurdity and senselessness. Our rejection derives support from the unrestrained shamelessness and the immoral longings which are obvious in many dreams. Antiquity, as we know, did not share this light valuation of dreams. The lower classes of our people today stick close to the value which they set

on dreams; they, however, expect from them, as did the ancients, the revelation of

the future. I confess that I see no need to adopt mystical hypotheses to fill out the gaps in our present knowledge, and so I have never been able to find anything that supported the hypothesis of the prophetic nature of dreams. Many other things, which are wonderful enough, can be said about them. are And first, not all dreams are so foreign to the character of the dreamer,

incomprehensible and confused. If you will undertake to consider the dreams of young children from the age of a year and a half on, you will find them quite simple and easy to interpret. The young child always dreams of the fulfilment of wishes of which were aroused in him the day before and were not satisfied. You need no art the into inquire to need only you solution, simple this interpretation to discover it would cerexperiences of the child on the day before (the “dream day”). Now the dreams of adults, tainly be a most satisfactory solution of the dream-riddle, if which had been wishes of s fulfilment children, of those too, were the same as

s which aroused in them during the dream day. This is actually the fact; the difficultie thorough analysis stand in the way of this solution can be removed step by step by a of the dream. of adults generThere is first of all, the most weighty objection that the dreams t least of anylfilmen wish-fu shows which , content ally have an incomprehensible disguise, the of process a one underg have dreams thing. The answer is this: these nt work presenting his dream theory and method of 2 The Interpretation of Dreams: (1899) Freud’s importa interpreting dreams.

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psychic content which underlies them was originally meant for quite different verbal expression. You must differentiate between the manifest dream-content, which we remember in the morning only confusedly, and with difficulty clothe in words which seem arbitrary, and the latent dream-thoughts, whose presence in the uncon-

scious we must assume. This distortion of the dream (Traumentstellung) is the same process which has been revealed to you in the investigations of the creations (symptoms) of hysterical subjects; it points to the fact that the same opposition of psychic forces has its share in the creation of dreams as in the creation of symptoms. The manifest dream-content is the disguised surrogate for the unconscious dream-thoughts, and this disguising is the work of the defensive forces of the ego, of the resistances. These prevent the repressed wishes from entering consciousness during the waking life, and even in the relaxation of sleep they are still strong enough to force them to hide themselves by a sort of masquerading. The dreamer, then, knows just as little the sense of his dream as the hysterical knows the relation and significance of his symptoms. That there are latent dream-thoughts and that between them and the manifest dream-content there exists the relation just described — of this you may convince yourselves by the analysis of dreams, a procedure the technique of which is exactly that of psycho-analysis. You must abstract entirely from the apparent connection of the elements in the manifest dream and seek for the irruptive ideas which arise through free association, according to the psycho-analytic laws, from each separate dream element. From this material the latent dream-thoughts may be discovered, exactly as one divines the concealed complexes of the patient from the fancies connected with his symptoms and memories. From the latent dream-thoughts which you will find in this way, you will see at once how thoroughly justified one is in interpreting the dreams of adults by the same rubrics as those of children. What is now substituted for the manifest dream-content is the real sense of the dream, is always clearly comprehensible, associated with the impressions of the day before, and appears as the fulfilling of an unsatisfied wish. The manifest dream, which we remember after waking, may then be described as a disguised fulfilment of repressed wishes. It is also possible by a sort of synthesis to get some insight into the process which has brought about the disguise of the unconscious dream-thoughts as the manifest dream-content. We call this process dream-work (Traumarbeit). This de-

serves our fullest theoretical interest, since here as nowhere else we can study the unsuspected psychic processes which are existent in the unconscious, or, to express it more exactly, between two such separate systems as the conscious and the unconscious. Among these newly discovered psychic processes, two, condensation (Verdichtung), and displacement or transvaluation, change of psychic accent (Verschiebung), stand out most prominently. Dream-work is a special case of the reaction of different mental groupings on each other, and as such is the consequence of psychic fission. In all essential points it seems identical with the work of disguise, which changes the repressed complex in the case of failing repression into symptoms. You will furthermore discover by the analysis of dreams, most convincingly your own, the unsuspected importance of the réle which impressions and experi-

T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965

ences from early childhood exert on the development of men. In the dream life, the child, as it were, continues his existence in the man, with a retention of all his traits

and wishes, including those which he was obliged to allow to fall into disuse in his later years. With irresistible might it will be impressed on you by what processes of development, of repression, sublimation, and reaction there arises out of the

child, with its peculiar gifts and tendencies, the so-called normal man, the bearer and partly the victim of our painfully acquired civilization. I will also direct your attention to the fact that we have discovered from the analysis of dreams that the unconscious makes use of a sort of symbolism, especially in the presentation of sexual complexes. This symbolism in part varies with the individual, but in part is of a typical nature, and seems to be identical with the symbolism which we suppose to lie behind our myths and legends. It is not impossible that these latter creations of the people may find their explanation from the study of dreams. Finally, I must remind you that you must not be led astray by the objection that the occurrence of anxiety-dreams (Angsttraiime), contradicts our idea of the dream as a wish-fulfilment. Apart from the consideration that anxiety dreams also require interpretation before judgment can be passed on them, one can say quite generally that the anxiety does not depend in such a simple way on the dream content as one might suppose without more knowledge of the facts and more attention to the conditions of neurotic anxiety. Anxiety is one of the ways in which the ego relieves itself of repressed wishes which have become too strong, and so is easy to explain in the dream, if the dream has gone too far towards the fulfilling of the objectionable wish. You see that the investigation of dreams was justified by the conclusions which it has given us concerning things otherwise hard to understand. But we came to it in connection with the psycho-analytic treatment of neurotics. From what has been said, you can easily understand how the interpretation of dreams, if it is not made

too difficult by the resistance of the patient, can lead to a knowledge of the patient’s concealed and repressed wishes and the complexes which he is nourishing.

aw

T. S. ELIOT B. UNITED STATES, 1888-1965

Eliot’s dramatic monologue, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a masterful portrait of the spirit of ennui, of weariness and boredom, first and was appeared in the Chicago literary magazine Poetry in June 1915 ions, Observat Other and Prufrock included in Eliot’s first book of poems, selfing debilitat the embody to appears published in 1917. Prufrock meancreate to inability its and class middle modern the consciousness of unable ingful human relationships. Trapped within social manners and

passion and to get beyond decorousness, Prufrock is separated from sexuality. For more on T. S. Eliot, see page 1450.

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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, si’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.'

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question .. . Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.” The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

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Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the windowpanes;

'S’io credesse . . . rispondo: The epigraph is from Dante’s Inferno (27.61-66); Guido da Montefeltro, whose

punishment for fraud is being wrapped in a flame, agrees to identify himself: “If I thought that I was speaking to someone who would ever return to the world, this flame would shake no more, but since no one has ever returned alive from this place, if what I hear is true, |answer you without fear of infamy.” Thus, the implication is that Prufrock, the narrator in Eliot’s poem, can speak honestly. “In the room... Michelangelo: It appears that Prufrock is going to this room to visit a woman women speak of Michelangelo (1475-1564), the famous Italian painter and sculptor.

friend;

Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands* 30

That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair,

40

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all— 50

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?

60

And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When | am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?

B.C.E.) wrote a long poem, Works and 3works ...hands: The ancient Greek poet Hesiod (eighth century gestures. social empty to work l meaningfu g contrastin is Days, about farm work; Eliot

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And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? 70

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Oflonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, 80

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,* Iam no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 90

Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus,’ come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head,

“Though!

. . . platter: John the Baptist was beheaded by King Herod; his head was brought to Queen Hero-

dias on a silver platter (Matthew 14:3-11). ° Lazarus: Raised from the dead by Jesus (John 11:1-44).

Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, 100

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, 110

That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! Iam not Prince Hamlet,° nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swella progress,’ start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence,° but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. 120

I grow old... I growold... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.

130

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

for his indecision. © Prince Hamlet: Shakespeare’s Hamlet (c. 1602) is known

” progress: A journey made by members of the royal court.

opinions

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ANDRE BRETON B. FRANCE, 1896-1966 One of the founders of the French surrealist movement, André Breton is known as the “Pope of Surrealism” for his defining role in the movement and his continuing commitment to its principles. Although he studied medicine and neuropsychology, Breton turned to poetry and the arts as part of the Dada movement in the early nineteen hundreds and later as the founder of surrealism. The surrealists sought to go beyond ordinary reality by liberating the truths of the unconscious mind. To do so, they tried to tap the world of dreams, using automatic writing and spontaneous creation to short-circuit the conscious interference of the rational mind. Breton’s debt to Freud is apparent in this program and in the passage from The Surrealist Manifesto, the first of three such documents (1924, 1930, 1934) that he drafted. Although he wrote many poems and

essays and edited several literary magazines and collections of literary works, he is remembered for these manifestoes that defined the surrealist movement.

FROM

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The Surrealist Manifesto Translated by Patrick Waldberg

We are still living under the reign of logic, but the logical processes of our time apply only to the solution of problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism which remains in fashion allows for the consideration of only those facts narrowly relevant to our experience. Logical conclusions, on the other hand, escape us. Needless to say, boundaries have been assigned even to experience. It revolves in a cage from which release is becoming increasingly difficult. It too depends upon immediate utility and is guarded by common sense. In the guise of civilization, under the pretext of progress, we have succeeded in dismissing from our minds anything that, rightly or wrongly, could be regarded as superstition or myth; and we have proscribed every way of seeking the truth which does not conform to convention. It would appear that it is by sheer chance that an aspect of intellectual life— and by far the most important in my opinion— about which no one was supposed to be concerned any longer has, recently, been brought back to light. Credit for this must go to Freud. On the evidence of his discoveries a current of opinion is at last developing which will enable the explorer of the human mind to extend his investigations, since he will be empowered to deal with more than merely summary realities. Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights. If the depths of our minds conceal strange forces capable of augmenting or conquering those on the 1438

Breton: The Surrealist Manifesto

surface, it is in our greatest interest to capture them; first to capture them and later to submit them, should the occasion arise, to the control of reason. The analysts themselves can only gain by this. But it is important to note that there is no method fixed a priori for the execution of this enterprise, that until the new order it can be considered the province of poets as well as scholars, and that its success does not depend

upon the more or less capricious routes which will be followed. It was only fitting that Freud should appear with his critique on the dream. In fact, it is incredible that this important part of psychic activity has still attracted so little attention. (For, at least from man’s birth to his death, thought presents no solution of continuity; the sum of dreaming moments—even taking into consideration pure dream alone, that of sleep—is from the point of view of time no less than the sum of moments of reality, which we shall confine to waking moments.) I have always been astounded by the extreme disproportion in the importance and seriousness assigned to events of the waking moments and to those of sleep by the ordinary observer. Man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all at the mercy of his memory, and the memory normally delights in feebly retracing the circumstance of the dream for him, depriving it of all actual consequence and obliterating the only determinant from the point at which he thinks he abandoned this constant hope, this anxiety, a few hours earlier. He has the illusion of continuing something worthwhile. The dream finds itself relegated to a parenthesis, like the night. And in general it gives no more counsel than the night. This singular state of affairs seems to invite a few reflections: 1. Within the limits to which its performance is restricted (or what passes for performance), the dream, according to all outward appearances, is continuous and bears traces of organization. Only memory claims the right to edit it, to suppress transitions and present us with a series of dreams rather than the dream. Similarly, at no given instant do we have more than a distinct representation of realities whose co-ordination is a matter of will. It is important to note that nothing leads to a greater dissipation of the constituent elements of the dream. I regret discussing this according to a formula which in principle excludes the dream. For how long, sleeping logicians, philosophers? I would like to sleep in order to enable myself to surrender to sleepers, as I surrender to those who read me with their eyes open, in order to stop the conscious rhythm of my thought from prevailing over this material. Perhaps my dream of last night was a continuation of the preceding night’s, and will be is in continued tonight with an admirable precision. It could be, as they say. And as it even concerned am I which with “reality” the case, a no way proven that, in such why exists in the dream state, or that it does not sink into the immemorial, then weight that reality— to refuse sometimes I what should I not concede to the dream I of self-assurance which by its own terms is not exposed to my denial? Why should conof degree increasing daily a of do I than sign. not expect more of the dream of life’s fundasciousness? Could not the dreams as well be applied to the solution other, and do the in as case one in same the mental problems? Are these problems

than the they already exist in the dream? Is the dream less oppressed by sanctions myself believe I which to reality this than rest? I am growing old and, perhaps more me. ageing is which it, to owe I that confined, it is the dream, and the detachment

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2. I return to the waking state. I am obliged to retain it as a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind show a strange tendency to disorientation under these conditions (this is the clue to slips of the tongue and lapses of all kinds whose secret is just beginning to be surrendered to us), but when functioning normally the mind still seems to obey none other than those suggestions which rise from that deep night Iam commending. Sound as it may be, its equilibrium is relative. The mind hardly dares express itself and, when it does, is limited to stating that this idea or that woman has an effect on it. What effect it cannot say; thus it gives the measure of its subjectivism and nothing more. The idea, the woman, disturbs it, disposes it to less severity. Their role is to isolate one second of its disappearance and remove it to the sky in that glorious acceleration that it can be, that itis. Then, asa last resort, the mind invokes chance—a more obscure divinity than the others—to whom it attributes all its aberrations. Who says that the angle from which that idea is presented which affects the mind, as well as what the mind loves in that woman’s eye, is not precisely the same thing that attracts the mind to its dream and reunites it with data lost through its own error? And if things were otherwise, of what might the mind not be capable? I should like to present it with the key to that passage. 3. The mind of the dreaming man is fully satisfied with whatever happens to it. The agonizing question of possibility does not arise. Kill, plunder more quickly, love as much as you wish. And if you die, are you not sure of being roused from the dead? Let yourself be led. Events will not tolerate deferment. You have no name. Everything is inestimably easy. What power, I wonder, what power so much more generous than others confers

this natural aspect upon the dream and makes me welcome unreservedly a throng of episodes whose strangeness would overwhelm me if they were happening as I write this? And yet I can believe it with my own eyes, my own ears. That great day has come, that beast has spoken.

If man’s awakening is harsher, if he breaks the spell too well, it is because he has been led to form a poor idea of expiation. 4. When the time comes when we can submit the dream to a methodical exam-

ination, when by methods yet to be determined we succeed in realizing the dream in its entirety (and that implies a memory discipline measurable in generations, but we can still begin by recording salient facts), when the dream’s curve is developed with an unequalled breadth and regularity, then we can hope that mysteries which are not really mysteries will give way to the great Mystery. I believe in the future resolution of these two states— outwardly so contradictory—which are dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak, I am aiming for its conquest, certain that I myself shall not attain it, but too indifferent to my death not to calcu-

late the joys of such possession.

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ABE Koso B. JAPAN, 1924-1993

Abé Kobo, best known outside of Japan for the novel The Woman in the

.

Dunes (1962), is one of Japan’s most acclaimed writers. Dealing with themes of alienation and displacement like many of his European, African, and Latin American peers, Abé views human existence in the modern world of mass production and consumption as a condition of absurdity. While Abé’s settings and characters are Japanese, the circumstances they face and the struggle they undertake to find meaning and to discover identity extend beyond national boundaries and speak to readers everywhere. Abé Kimifusa, who later changed his name to Abé Kobo, was born in Tokyo in 1924. Abé grew up in Mukden (now Shanyeng), Manchuria, where his father was a doctor. Although Abé also studied medicine, he never practiced, choosing instead a literary career.

alist stories, which

The Woman in the Dunes (1962), perhaps the most widely known of

Abé’s works, won the Yomiuri Prize for literature and brought Abé’s work worldwide recognition. The novel recounts the story of a schoolteacher and amateur entomologist, Jumpei Niki, who is taken prisoner in a remote village while on vacation collecting insects for his hobby. Jumpei takes refuge with a young widow who lives in a house continuously buried by collapsing sand dunes. Accepting his Sisyphean task of survival under these conditions, Jumpei helps the woman in her never-ending struggle to survive by shoveling sand. When he finally has the chance to escape, he chooses in an act of existential good faith to stay. Throughout his work Abé transformed into surreal and sometimes nightmarish metaphors the alienation and absurdity he found in the modern industrializing world of postwar Japan. With “The Red Cocoon”

. Abé’s early surre-

are a mixture of science fiction,

humor, and the motif of homelessness,

are... appealing

precisely because they mute the pain of alienation through their formal facetiousness, and

because they introduce but do not

probe the ramifications of the modern dilemma ofloss. — Van C. GESSEL, critic, 1989

(1950), Abé began a series of stories about metamorphoses that includes The Wall and “The Stick” (1955). Comparable to Kafka’s The Metamor-

phosis, though written in a more self-consciously surrealistic style, ~ the Red Cocoon” has as its theme the precariousness of identity and the devaluation of individuality in a postwar world that has witnessed genocide, massive civilian casualties in war, and the use of devastating weapons, including the atomic bomb.

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The Red Cocoon Translated by Lane Dunlop

The sun is starting to set. It’s the time when people hurry home to their roosts, but I don’t have a roost to go back to. I go on walking slowly down the narrow cleft between the houses. Although there are so many houses lined up along the streets, why is there not one house which is mine? I think, repeating the same question for the hundredth time. When I take a piss against a telephone pole, sometimes there’s a scrap of rope hanging down, and I want to hang myself. The rope, looking at my neck out of the corner of its eye, says: “Let’s rest, brother.” And I want to rest, too. But I can’t rest. I’m not

the rope’s brother, and besides, I still can’t understand why I don’t have a house. Every day, night comes. When night comes, you have to rest. Houses are to rest in. If that’s so, it’s not that I don’t have a house, isit?

Suddenly, I get an idea. Maybe I’ve been making a serious mistake in my thinking. Maybe it’s not that I don’t have a house, but that I’ve forgotten it. That’s right, it could be. For example, I stop in front of this house I happen to be passing. Might not this be my house? Of course, compared to other houses, it has no special feature that particularly breathes out that possibility, but one could say the same of any house. That cannot be a proof canceling the fact that this may be my house. I’m feeling brave. OK, let’s knock on the door.

I’m in luck. The smiling face of a woman looks out of a half-opened window. She seems kind. The wind of hope blows through the neighborhood of my heart. My heart becomes a flag that spreads out flat and flutters in the wind. I smile, too. Like a

real gentleman, | say: “Excuse me, but this isn’t my house by any chance?” The woman’s face abruptly hardens. “What? Who are you?” About to explain, all of a sudden I can’t. I don’t know what I should explain. How can I make her understand that it’s not a question now of who I am? Getting a little desperate, I say:

“Well, if you think this isn’t my house, will you please prove it to me?” “My god . . .” The woman’s face is frightened. That gets me angry. “If you have no proof, it’s all right for me to think it’s mine.” “But this is my house.” “What does that matter? Just because you say it’s yours doesn’t mean it’s not mine. That’s so.” Instead of answering, the woman turns her face into a wall and shuts the win-

dow. That’s the true form of a woman’s smiling face. It’s always this transformation that gives away the incomprehensible logic by which, because something belongs to someone, it does not belong to me. But, why . . . why does everything belong to someone else and not to me? Even if itisn’t mine, can’t there be just one thing that doesn’t belong to anyone? Sometimes, I have delusions. That the concrete pipes on construction sites or in storage yards are my house. But they’re already on the way to belonging to somebody.

Kobo: The Red Cocoon

Because they become someone else’s, they disappear without any reference to my wishes or interest in them. Or they turn into something that is clearly not my house. Well then, how about park benches? They'd be fine, of course. If they were really my house, and if only he didn’t come and chase me off them with his stick... Certainly they belong to everybody, not to anybody. But he says: “Hey, you, get up. This bench belongs to everybody. It doesn’t belong to anybody, least of all you. Come on, start moving. If you don’t like it, you can spend the night in the basement lockup at the precinct house. If you stop anyplace else, no matter where, you'll be breaking the law.” The Wandering Jew—is that who I am?

The sun is setting. I keep walking. A house... houses that don’t disappear, turn into something else, that stand on the ground and don’t move. Between them, the cleft that keeps changing, that doesn’t have any one face that stays the same . . . the street. On rainy days, it’s like a paint-loaded brush, on snowy days it becomes just the width of the tire ruts, on windy days it flows like a conveyor belt. I keep walking. I can’t understand why I don’t have a house, and so I can’t even hang myself. Hey, who’s holding me around the ankle? If it’s the rope for hanging, don't get so excited, don’t be in such a hurry. But that’s not what it is. It’s a sticky silk thread. When I grab it and pull it, the end’s in a split between the upper and sole of my shoe. It keeps getting longer and longer, slippery-like. This is weird. My curiosity makes me keep pulling it in. Then something even weirder happens. I’m slowly leaning over. I can’t stand up at a right angle to the ground. Has the earth’s axis tilted or the gravitational force changed direction? A thud. My shoe drops off and hits the ground. I see what’s happening. The earth’s axis hasn’t tilted, one of my legs has gotten shorter. As I pull at the thread, my leg rapidly gets shorter and shorter. Like the elbow of a frayed jacket unraveling, my leg’s unwinding. The thread, like the fiber of a snake gourd, is my disintegrating leg. I can’t take one more step. I don’t know what to do. I keep on standing. In my hand that doesn’t know what to do either, my leg that has turned into a silk thread starts to move by itself. It crawls out smoothly. The tip, without any help from my hand, unwinds itself and like a snake starts wrapping itself around me. When my left leg’s all unwound, the thread switches as natural as you please to my right leg. In a little while, the thread has wrapped my whole body in a bag. Even then, it doesn’t stop but unwinds me from the hips to the chest, from the chest to the shoulders, and as it unwinds it strengthens the bag from inside. In the end, Pm gone. Afterward, there remained a big empty cocoon.

This, at least, is Ah, now at last I can rest. The evening sun dyes the cocoon red.

is now that I my house for sure, which nobody can keep me out of. The only trouble

have a house, there’s no “I” to return to it. inside the cocoon it Inside the cocoon, time stopped. Outside, it was dark, but

colors of sunset. was always evening. Illumined from within, it glowed red with the eye. He spotan’s policem sharp his This outstanding peculiarity was bound to catch angry, but was he first At . ted me, the cocoon, lying between the rails of the crossing After pocket. his into me put he soon changing his mind about this unusual find, box. toy son’s his to tumbling around in there for a while, I was transferred

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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ B. COLOMBIA, 1927

Ben Martin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1984

Garcia Marquez in his home library in Colombia. (Ben

Martin/Timepix)

The fictional village of Macondo, where Gabriel Garcia Marquez sets many of his novels and stories, is based on the obscure village of Aracataca in northeastern Colombia where the author spent his early childhood. Although he left the village when he was eight, he guaranteed its literary survival by naming it “Macondo” in his work and making it one of modern literature’s mythic places of the imagination. Though he has lived and worked internationally, Garcia Marquez’s writings almost always go back to Macondo, whose history and mythology distill his experience and embody his view of the human condition. Garcia Marquez was inspired to write fiction by reading the MODERNIST writers of the early twentieth century. Reading Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (Borges’s Spanish translation) was a watershed for Garcia Marquez: “I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing much earlier.” But the most important influence on the author’s writing, it turned out, was his grandmother and her way of telling stories. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), his best-known work, is the

saga of the founding of Macondo and its rise and fall over a century. It combines realistic detail with folk legends and myths; hyperbolic, archetypal characters; and fantastic, dreamlike events. It chronicles seven generations of the family of the founder, José Arcadio Buendia. The town

and its history become an imaginative microcosm of the Latin American experience and, indeed, the human experience, for its mythic dimensions reach from the Garden of Eden to the Flood to the Apocalypse. Its mixture of realism, myth, and the miraculous has been called “MAGICAL REALISM.” “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” This short story, written shortly after One Hundred Years of Solitude and included in a collection of Garcia Marquez’s stories in 1972, recounts in deadpan, realistic narration

a series of bizarre and miraculous events—a voice characteristic of the author’s magical realism. The angel of the story’s title does not have the appearance of a supernatural being but rather that of an unkempt and disheveled old man. As each of the villagers seeks to “explain” the angel and deny or ignore his supernatural nature, Garcia Marquez reveals their superstition and self-interest and satirizes institutions such as the church. The ending may surprise readers as it does the villagers; it also raises questions about the presence of the miraculous in the midst of the mundane.

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Marquez: A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Cw

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Translated by Gregory Rabassa

On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn't get up, impeded by his enormous wings. Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife, who was putting compresses on the sick child, and he took her to the rear of the courtyard. They both looked at the fallen body with mute stupor. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather had taken away any sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and halfplucked, were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor’s voice. That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm. And yet, they called in a neighbor woman who knew everything about life and death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them their mistake. “He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child, but the

poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.” On the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo’s house. Against the judgment of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from him the kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club, and before going to bed he dragged the In coop. chicken wire the in hens the with up out of the mud and locked him killing still were Elisenda and Pelayo stopped, rain middle of the night, when the with a desire to crabs. A short time afterward the child woke up without a fever and raft with fresh a on angel the put to decided and eat. Then they felt magnanimous high seas. But the on fate his to him leave and water and provisions for three days

of dawn, they found the when they went out into the courtyard with the first light

angel, without whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the in the wire as openings the through eat to the slightest reverence, tossing him things animal. circus a but if he weren't a supernatural creature

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IN THE WORLD: MODERNISM

Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o'clock, alarmed at the strange news. By that time onlookers less frivolous than those at dawn had already arrived and they were making all kinds of conjectures concerning the captive’s future. The simplest among them thought that he should be named mayor of the world. Others of sterner mind felt that he should be promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to win all wars. Some visionaries hoped that he could be put to stud in order to implant on earth a race of winged wise men who could take charge of the universe. But Father Gonzaga, before becoming a priest, had been a robust woodcutter. Standing by the wire, he reviewed his catechism in an instant and asked them to open the door so

that he could take a close look at that pitiful man who looked more like a huge decrepit hen among the fascinated chickens. He was lying in a corner drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown him. Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The parish priest had his first suspicion of an impostor when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: He had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back

side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels. Then he came out of the chicken coop and in a brief sermon warned the curious against the risks of being ingenuous. He reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary. He argued that if wings were not the essential element in determining the difference between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels. Nevertheless, he promised to write a letter to his bishop so that the latter would write to his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict from the highest courts. His prudence fell on sterile hearts. The news of the captive angel spread with such rapidity that after a few hours the courtyard had the bustle of a marketplace and they had to call in troops with fixed bayonets to disperse the mob that was about to knock the house down. Elisenda, her spine all twisted from sweeping up so much marketplace trash, then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see the angel. The curious came from far away. A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the crowd several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but, rather, those of a sidereal bat. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood had been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese man who couldn't sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a

sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while awake; and many others with less serious ailments. In the midst of that shipwreck disorder that made the earth tremble, Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue, for in less than a week they had crammed their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond the horizon.

Marquez: A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in his borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been placed along the wire. At first they tried to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to the wisdom of the wise

neighbor woman, were the food prescribed for angels. But he turned them down, just as he turned down the papal lunches that the penitents brought him, and they never found out whether it was because he was an angel or because he was an old man that in the end he ate nothing but eggplant mush. His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience. Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise so they could see him standing. The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he had been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was dead. He awoke with a start, ranting in his hermetic language and with tears in his eyes, and he flapped his wings a couple of times, which brought on a whirlwind of chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic that did not seem to be of this world. Although many thought that his reaction had been one not of rage but of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passivity was not that of a hero taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose. Father Gonzaga held back the crowd’s frivolity with formulas of maidservant inspiration while awaiting the arrival of a final judgment on the nature of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn't just a Norwegian with wings. Those meager letters might have come and gone until the end of time if a providential event had not put an end to the priest’s tribulations. It so happened that during those days, among so many other carnival attractions, there arrived in town the traveling show of the woman who had been changed not into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. The admission to see her was all her ask to permitted were people but angel, only less than the admission to see the that so down and up her examine to and state manner of questions about her absurd tarantula the no one would ever doubt the truth of her horror. She was a frightful ing, howheartrend most was What maiden. size of a ram and with the head of a sad she which with affliction sincere the but ever, was not her outlandish shape had she child a y practicall still While e. recounted the details of her misfortun was coming back sneaked out of her parents’ house to go to a dance, and while she a fearful thunn, permissio without night through the woods after having danced all bolt of brimlightning the came crack the derclap rent the sky in two and through the meatballs from came ent nourishm only stone that changed her into a spider. Her full of so that, like spectacle A mouth. that charitable souls chose to toss into her even without defeat to bound was much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, the Besides, mortals. at look to deigned trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely mental disorder, like the blind few miracles attributed to the angel showed a certain

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IN THE WORLD: MODERNISM

man who didn’t recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn’t get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers. Those consolation miracles, which were more like mocking fun, had already ruined the angel’s reputation when the woman who had been changed into a spider finally crushed him completely. That was how Father Gonzaga was cured forever of his insomnia and Pelayo’s courtyard went back to being as empty as during the time it had rained for three days and crabs walked through the bedrooms. The owners of the house had no reason to lament. With the money they saved they built a two-story mansion with balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn’t get in during the winter, and with iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn’t get in. Pelayo also set up a rabbit warren close to town and gave up his job as bailiff for good, and Elisenda bought some satin pumps with high heels and many dresses of iridescent silk, the kind worn on Sunday by the most desirable women in those times. The chicken coop was the only thing that didn’t receive any attention. If they washed it down with creolin and burned tears of myrrh inside it every so often, it was not in homage to the angel but to drive away the dungheap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost and was turning the new house into an old one. At first, when the child learned to walk, they were careful that he not get too

close to the chicken coop. But then they began to lose their fears and got used to the smell, and before the child got his second teeth he’d gone inside the chicken coop to play, where the wires were falling apart. The angel was no less standoffish with him than with other mortals, but he tolerated the most ingenious infamies with the patience of a dog who had no illusions. They both came down with chicken pox at the same time. The doctor who took care of the child couldn't resist the temptation to listen to the angel’s heart, and he found so much whistling in the heart and so many sounds in his kidneys that it seemed impossible for him to be alive. What surprised him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human organism that he couldn’t understand why other men didn’t have them too. When the child began school it had been some time since the sun and rain had caused the collapse of the chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man. They would drive him out of the bedroom with a broom and a moment later find him in the kitchen. He seemed to be in so many places at the same time that they grew to think that he’d been duplicated, that he was reproducing himself all through the house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living in that hell full of angels. He could scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become so foggy that he went about bumping into posts. All he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers. Pelayo threw a blanket over him and extended him the charity of letting him sleep in the shed, and only then did they notice that he had a temperature at night, and was delirious with the tongue twisters of an old Norwegian. That was one of the few times they became alarmed, for they thought he was going to die and not even the wise neighbor

woman had been able to tell them what to do with dead angels. And yet he not only survived his worst winter, but seemed improved with the first sunny days. He remained motionless for several days in the farthest corner of

Marquez: A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

the courtyard, where no one would see him, and at the beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a scarecrow, which looked more like another misfortune of decrepitude. But he must have known the reason for those changes, for he was quite careful that no one should notice them,

that no one should hear the sea chanteys that he sometimes sang under the stars. One morning Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch when a wind that seemed to come from the high seas blew into the kitchen. Then she went to the window and caught the angel in his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that his fingernails opened a furrow in the vegetable patch and he was on the point of knocking the shed down with the ungainly flapping that slipped on the light and couldn't get a grip on the air. But he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she saw him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watch- | ing until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.

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edb GAO le le

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

map: Europe in1914

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War, Conflict, and Resistance

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TIME AND PLACE: Twentieth-Century Europe:

Guernica

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aw

T. S. ELIoT B. UNITED STATES, 1888-1965 T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, the most notable twentieth-century poem in English, appeared in the November 1922 issue of the literary magazine The Dial. The Waste Land depicts the modern world as a devastated place whose land has lost its regenerative capacity, whose cities are sites of pollution and despair, and whose human relation-

T. S. Eliot, 1948

ane he Tnehiute for Advanced Study,

Eliot in his office at

(Hulton/Archive)

ships are empty and sterile, without moral or spiritual value. More than any other single work, it also reflects the disillusionment of American intellectuals, some of them European expatriates, with Western society at the end of World War I. Nonlinear in structure, : Pe eda fragmented in organization, and obscure in its references, the poem ; BCs , : seemed destined for a limited audience; but after being augmented by notes by the author and supported by interpretive reviews and essays, it went on to establish itself as a monument of its age.

It is now common to identify the postwar period in Europe and America as the “wasteland,” the spiritual and intellectual condition that promoted the spread of EXISTENTIALISM in the 1930s, ’40s, and

50s. In 1948, twenty-six years after the poem’s publication, Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, and as Elizabeth Drew recounts,

a symposium held to pay tribute to his influence “contained contributions from forty-seven writers from more than a dozen different countries, and hailed the poet-critic-dramatist as perhaps the most powerful literary influence in the civilized world of today.” Eliot was like an entire literary movement in himself: a poet, an enormously popular lecturer on both sides of the Atlantic, a leading critic, a publisher of an influential literary magazine, and a director of a prominent publishing house in London.

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T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965

Eliot came to symbolize the traditional and the conservative in religion, politics, and literature, but his poems are marvelously innovative and experimental. He was heavily influenced by the FRENCH Sympoutsts,’ who had broken with traditional subject matter and

polite, poetic language. He was attracted to sTREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS writing, which could pull together experiences and images from disparate periods and locales. Above all, he was well read and in favor of drawing from the broad reaches of European and world literature. He once described the challenge for the twentieth-century writer: “Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results. The poet must become more and more

Rika

For links to

more information

about Eliot, quizzes on his poetry, and information on Eliot’s 21st-century relevance, see bedford stmartins.com/ worldlitcompact.

comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to

dislocate if necessary, language into meaning.” Eliot and The Waste Land had their detractors, especially among American poets. It was believed that the poem turned the attention of American writers away from the tradition of Walt Whitman—

p. 845

optimistic, democratic, and nationalistic—to a more pessimistic,

elitist, and cosmopolitan aesthetic that virtually silenced homegrown literature for a decade and made the recovery of a native literature difficult even in the Depression years of the 1930s, when new struggles produced new literary impulses. American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) commented in retrospect that The Waste Land

“wiped out our world as if an atomic bomb had been dropped on it.” From St. Louis to Harvard. Thomas Stearns Eliot was born September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest son of seven had children. His family, which was highly intellectual and literary, to ons connecti strong ned maintai and come from Massachusetts New England. Eliot’s grandfather William Greenleaf Eliot, a graduate where he of Harvard Divinity School, moved to St. Louis in 1834 Washington founded the first Unitarian church; he also founded Stearns, was a Champe e Charlott University in 1859. Eliot’s mother,

summers in writer of biographies and religious verse. Eliot spent his setts, Massachu New England, eventually attending Milton Academy in under the influand in 1906 he entered Harvard University and came author of Rousseau ence of Irving Babbit, the classical, anti-Romantic

'French

Symbolists:

Nineteenth-century

French

Symbolists

Charles

Baudelaire

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(1821-1867),

Stéphane

the inner 896) made use of symbols as a means of evoking Mallarmé (1842-1898), and Paul Verlaine (1844-1 world of consciousness.

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TEGAN TE @ NEE

ail Soe lO

and Romanticism. Three years later he began graduate work in philosophy, again at Harvard. He completed a master’s degree in one year and went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne; he then returned to Harvard and began a doctoral dissertation on F. H. Bradley.” Around this time he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a poem that

captures the frustration and disillusionment of the age. Critical Years of Transition.

The years 1914 and 1915 figure promi-

nently in Eliot’s life as a writer. World War I broke out while he was studying in Germany on a traveling fellowship from Harvard, pushing him to England, where he settled down and lived for the rest of his life. He did not return to Harvard to finish his doctorate, and he turned

from philosophy to poetry. In 1915 he married Vivien Haigh-Wood and in London met Ezra Pound, a transplanted American poet from the Midwest who loved to shepherd new talent into the public eye. Pound persuaded Harriet Monroe, the editor of the Chicago-based Poetry, to publish “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (June 1915)

Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity,

and introduced Eliot to the director of Egoist Press, Harriet Weaver. Weaver published Eliot’s first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917, the same year the poet took a job as a clerk in a bank, Lloyd’s of London. Eliot became a forerunner of the “Lost Generation,’ the international set of American writers who declared their disaffection with European politics and society after the slaughter of so many young soldiers in World War I.

playing upona refined sensibility,

The Waste Land.

must produce vari-

he wrote The Waste Land, as his security and happiness were being challenged on several fronts. For some time he had struggled to overcome the puritanical element in his family history; poems such as “Prufrock” treated the theme of sexual repression, whereas other early poems were surprisingly bawdy and crude, often self-consciously prim-

ous and complex results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allu-

sive, more indirect, in order to force, to

Clearly Eliot was in crisis in 1921 and 1922 when

itive in their depiction of characters and situations. His wife, Vivien,

who was mentally unstable, was suffering from bouts of neuralgia

dislocate if neces-

and insomnia. Meanwhile, Eliot’s family had withdrawn their financial

sary, language into

support, thinking that Eliot was wasting his life in literature; then his

meaning.

father died in 1919. When Eliot had a breakdown, a neurologist suggested he take a leave from his work at the bank, and Eliot found

-T.S. Etior, 1921

*F. H. Bradley (1846-1924): English philosopher who emphasized the private nature of individual experience in Appearance and Reality (1893); he influenced Eliot’s private imagery.

T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965

[5] Triple Alliance —

Triple Entente

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Stockholm SWEDEN

North

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200”

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200

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400 kilometers

Mediterranean

Sea

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Europe in 1914

Alliance of In the summer of 1914, most of Europe was divided into two camps: the Triple France, and Britain, Great Entente— Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy and the Triple within the groups ethnic of s aspiration t nationalis the by Russia. This division was intensified by inflamed were s nationalist Serbian There Balkans. the in especially European empires, “greater a of part as Austria’s annexation in 1908 of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which they conveted to the Austro-Hungarian Serbia.” On June 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir

Serbian. This event triggered throne, was assassinated in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo by a into World War I. Europe plunging alliances, rival the military mobilizations by

of 1921, the psychiatric help in Lausanne, Switzerland, in the winter came to his aid: time of the writing of The Waste Land. Again Pound edit the poem in He collected money for Eliot’s support and helped The Waste Land 1922. in manuscript, seeing it through to publication ion (October 1922) first appeared in England in the first issue of Criter

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TEXSEEN CONTEXT: T. 5) ELIOT

Although Eliot

and in America in The Dial (November 1922). Eliot’s original poem,

deferred to Yeats as

before it was edited and drastically reduced by Ezra Pound, and unpublished drafts of the poem were made available to scholars in 1968 from

“the greatest poet” of his time, he was

the manuscript collections of John Quinn, a New York patron of the

himself the most

nation, trained in

arts. A facsimile edition of the poem with original drafts was edited by Valerie Eliot, his second wife, and published in 1971. A number of letters written by Eliot during the creation of The Waste Land corroborate his vulnerable and sometimes desperate emotional and financial circumstances. One close friend, the American critic Edmund Wilson, called the poem “nothing more or less than a most distressingly moving account of Eliot’s own agonized state of

classics, fluent in

mind, and Eliot himself said of the poem in 1947 that he had written

French and German,

it “simply to relieve” his feelings. Nevertheless the work elevated Eliot into the top tier of modern poetry; no one in the twentieth century had painted such an inclusive portrait of the world as it was after World War I while making use of the diverse conventions of Western literature.

famous. A man of keen intellect,

capable of developing a philosophical position as well as a new rhythm and into-

Eliot was better

equipped than any other poet to bring

verse fully into the twentieth century. As James Joyce remarked of him ina notebook, he abolished the idea of poetry for ladies. — RICHARD ELLMANN,

critic, 1973

Christianity and Conservatism. In 1922, Eliot resigned from the editorial board of The Dial and started a heavily influential cultural magazine, The Criterion, the critical focus of which was a conservative

assessment of the relationship between culture and society. From this point on, Eliot’s life and work turned toward literary and religious orthodoxy and political conservatism. He became a British subject in 1927, and in the same year he took communion in the Anglican

Church. He committed his first wife to a mental able to overcome his own emotional distress. In Ash Wednesday, a poem of religious conversion, wrote the first section of a long Christian poem,

institution and was 1930, he published and later in the decade Four Quartets, which

he completed in 1943. When Eliot turned to writing drama, most of

it too held a religious message. Two of his major plays, the early historical drama Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and the later contemporary work The Cocktail Party (1949), both concern Christian martyrdom,

an unusual topic for the twentieth century. In later life Eliot worked as a senior editor for Faber and Faber, a leading British publisher, rarely traveling to the United States. He eventually remarried— happily this time—and died peacefully in 1965.

The Complexities of The Waste Land. Two characteristics of The Waste Land (1922) are immediately challenging. The first is its composition: It moves from one image to another and from situation to situation

T.S. Eliot, 1888-1965

without any explanation or transition. David Daiches explains: “Eliot’s real novelty—and the cause of much bewilderment when his poems first appeared — was his deliberate elimination of all merely connective and transitional passages, his building up of the total pattern of meaning through the immediate juxtaposition of images. . . .” In fact, it was American poet Ezra Pound who in editing the poem cut away much of that connective tissue, making the work both startling and hard to follow. The second challenge of The Waste Land are the many literary excerpts quoted in their original languages: Greek and Latin classics, medieval Romance, Elizabethan drama, German opera, French Symbolist poetry, and religious writings, from Christian to Buddhist sources to the Indian Upanishads.” Eliot introduced his notes for the publication of The Waste Land in book form with a comment about his influences: Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge). . . . To another work of anthropology I am

indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognize in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.

In the European Middle Ages a Christian Mythological Themes. myth developed around the Grail, which according to legend was by the cup or platter used by Jesus at the Last Supper and then used ion. The Joseph of Arimathea to collect Jesus’ blood at the Crucifix

uncertain Grail became the possession of a series of Grail kings in an King from location. In the stories that were told of it, a brave knight usually Perceval—endures a perilous journey in Arthur’s cou—rt

castle of the sexuorder to find the Grail, which is hidden away in the

s, the knight ally wounded Fisher King. By asking the right question

Weston in her book can heal the king and reinvigorate the land. Jessie

involved with the connects the Grail stories to older fertility rituals h Drew Elizabet rebirth. and annual plant cycle of birth, death, explains:

c. the ninth and the ancient wisdom of India; written between 3 Upanishads: A series of writings containing the first centuries B.C.E.

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ECO NMED;

TS) BENOm

Miss Weston found the Grail legends to be Christianized versions, via the “mystery” religions,‘ of the ancient fertility cults. She believed the knight’s “quest” to be a version of older initiation rites into religious mysteries concerned with the union of the physical with the source of spiritual being. These faiths, she thinks, were spread into western Europe by Syrian merchants and later transformed into the stories of the Grail.

Eliot wants to

suggest in the

James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890) is a brilliant work of comparative mythology about early fertility myths and rituals in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean region, with a focus on the dying-and-rising god-hero-king whose life and sacrificial death were annually reenacted in imitation of the seasonal cycle of plants. Eliot translates the Grail quest into the modern search for meaning. The underlying theme of The Waste Land concerns time: The present time can be appreciated and understood only in the context of the past. Only within the context and continuity of past wisdom can a pattern be found that will comprehend the fragmentation of modern society. The death images of rock, dust, bones, and polluted water are paradoxically also the potential of new life. The blind Tiresias, who becomes an amalgam of modern men in the poem, needs a new vision, a new set of eyes by which he can be healed and the modern city transformed. Eliot’s tendency to combine emotional, historical, mythical, and

rhythms of his verse

literary references is complicated enough; the footnotes he provided

the movement of thought in a living

in later editions of the work attest to the obscurity of some of his sources and the compression of his ideas and images.

mind, and thus to communicate the

exact pattern of his meaning not so much by logical structure

as by emotional

suggestion.

_ F, O, MATTHIESSEN, 1947

Reactions to The Waste Land. The Waste Land’s first generation of critics were kept busy trying to explain the poem to a somewhat baffled literary audience. Edmund Wilson led the way in a long essay in The Dial in December 1922, illuminating a number of references based on his reading of Eliot’s own notes, which were soon being published with the poem. Critic Kathleen Raine, however, not only understood the work but thought it had understood everything:

““mystery” religions: Mystery cults were very popular in ancient Greece and Rome for at least one thousand years, beginning c. 1000 B.c.k. The details of their inner workings were kept secret, but all shared a rigorous rite of initiation, a concern about death, and a hope for immortality centered on a deity who had personal knowledge of the afterlife. The most popular Greek versions were the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries. The mysteries of Isis and Mithra were favored in the Roman world.

T.S. Eliot, 1888-1965

For my generation T. S. Eliot’s early poetry, more than the work of any other poet, has enabled us to know our world imaginatively. All those who have lived in the Waste Land of London, can, I suppose, remember the’particular occasion on which, reading T. S. Eliot’s poems for the first time, an experience of the contemporary world that had been nameless and formless, suddenly received its apotheosis.

And American critic Malcolm Cowley feels he and other young writers understood the poem well but that it didn’t speak for them: The idea was a simple one. Beneath the rich symbolism of The Waste Land, the wide learning expressed in seven languages, the actions conducted on three planes, the musical episodes, the geometrical structure— beneath and by means of all this, we felt the

poet was saying that the present is inferior to the past. The past was dignified; the present is barren of emotion. The past was a landscape nourished by living fountains; now the fountains of spiritual grace are dry. . . . It happened that we were excited by the adventure of living in the present. The famous “postwar mood of aristocratic disillusionment” was a mood we had never

really shared. It happened that Eliot’s subjective truth was not our own.

E. E. Cummings, an American poet, asked why Eliot could not write his own lines instead of borrowing from dead poets. And modern American novelist Ernest Hemingway wrote in Transatlantic Review: “If I knew that by grinding Mr. Eliot into a fine dry powder and sprinkling that powder over Mr. Conrad’s grave Mr. Conrad would shortly appear, looking very annoyed at the forced return, and commence writing, I would leave for London early tomorrow with a sausage grinder.” m@ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography

Ackroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot: ALife. 1984. Bush, Ronald. T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style. 1984. Childs, DonaldJ. T. S. Eliot: Mystic, Son and Lover. 1997.

Gordon, Lyndall. T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. 1988.

Criticism

Albright, Daniel. Quantum Poetics. 1997. 1991. Bush, Ronald, ed. T. S. Eliot: The Modernist in History. 1966. Eliot. S. T. Cattaui, Georges. Form. 1995. Julius, Anthony. T. S. Eliot: Anti-Semitism and Literary 1964. Land. Waste The over Storm Knoll, Robert E., ed.

S. Eliot. 1994. Moody, David A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to T. 1996. Poetry. Early Eliot’s S. T. in Palmer, Marja. Men and Women

Smith, Grover. The Waste Land. 1983.

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The Waste Land’ “Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: S(Budda 7 0€dets; respondebat illa: dmobavew Hho.” For Ezra Pound il miglior fabbro.”

I. THe BurIAL OF THE DEAD‘

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.” And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow 20

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,°

‘Eliot added some notes for the publication of The Waste Land in book form by Boni and Liveright, New York, December 1922. These are identified by (E). We have omitted or departed from these notes as has seemed fitting, while adding additional notes for clarification. 2“For I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl from Cumae hanging in abottle, and when the boys asked her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she would reply, ‘I want to die’” —Petronius, Satyricon, 48. According to legend, the prophetess had been granted a long life but not perpetual youth, and so she was hideously shriveled with age. Compare Madame Sosostris and Tiresias, fortune-tellers later to appear in The Waste Land. * il miglior fabbro: “The better maker [poet].” Eliot compliments his friend Ezra Pound, who edited the poem into its final form during the period of Eliot’s hospitalization. The Italian original is Dante’s praise of the poet Arnaut Daniel, from the Purgatorio, 26, 117.

“The Burial of the Dead: Title of the funeral service in The Book of Common Prayer. 5Bin . . . deutsch: “I’m not Russian at all; Icome from Lithuania, pure German.” The remark is ironical; little

is “pure” in the poem. The scene is from the vicinity of Munich, in south Germany. °Son of man: God’s address to the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 2:1).

The Waste Land, |. The Burial of the Dead

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,’

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; 30

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.* Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind,

Wo weilest du?’

40

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; “They called me the hyacinth girl.” — Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer."° Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards.” Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes.’ Look!)

Here is Belladonna," the Lady of the Rocks,

7 the cricket no relief: Compare Ecclesiastes 12:5. in the funeral service. 8 handful of dust: Compare “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” version of Tristan and Isolde: “Fresh blows the ° Frisch... du?: The lyric in German is from Wagner’s opera abide?” you do where / girl Irish wind / toward the homeland. / My the sea.” The dying Tristan looks out to sea and 10 Qed’... Meer: From Tristan and Isolde: “Waste and empty

finds no sign of Isolde’s ship. to that of the Egyptian pharaoh Seostris. 1 Madame Sosostris: A fortune-teller; her name is close ed in ancient Egypt for the purposes of divination. wicked .. . cards: Tarot cards, thought to have originat

over his father, I, ii, 399-402. Consolation of Ariel to Ferdinand 3 Those... eyes: Shakespeare, The Tempest,

who is feared drowned: Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.

a poison. 14 Belladonna: Italian for “lovely lady,” but also

1459

TLEXUINICOND EL

1460

50

iio se L@m

The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,” And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man." Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days. 60

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,” A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many." Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine." There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson! 70

“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!”° “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,

“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!”' “You! hypocrite lecteur!

— mon semblable, — mon frére

12222

the man... the Wheel: Eliot says that he associates, “quite arbitrarily,” the “man with three staves” with the Fisher King, who appears later. The Wheel could be the wheel of fortune.

'° Hanged Man: Eliot himself confesses that he has “departed to suit my own convenience” from the symbolism of the Tarot pack (E). prec

Unreal . . . dawn: Echoes Baudelaire’s “Swarming city, city full of dreams, / where the specter in broad daylight accosts the passerby,” from The Flowers of Evil.

181... many: Dante’s comment in the Inferno, seeing the citizens of Hell: “Such a long procession / of people, I had not thought/death had undone so many” (Inferno, 3, 55-57).

“Sighs .. . nine: Eliot supplies commonplace scenes from London: St. Mary Woolnoth, a church in the business district, and the dead sound in the tower clock, “a phenomenon which I have often noticed” (E).

*°« pansies: Lorca uses the Spanish maricas ; Interestingly, Lorca uses sissy.” and ” “fairy, ,” “pansy as ry catego same the in men— gay nate effemi for names noun: los maricas. the masculine article with a feminine

1523

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FEDERICO

GARCIA LORCA

This one also! This one! And they fall on your chaste and luminous beard, Northern blonds, Negroes of the sands,

60

multitudes of shrieks and gestures, like cats or like snakes, the pansies, Walt Whitman, the pansies, muddy with tears, flesh for the whip, boot or bite of subduers. This one also! This one! Tainted fingers appear on the shore of your dreams when the friend eats your apple with a faint taste of petrol and the sun sings along the navels of boys that play under bridges. But you did not search for the scratched eyes, or the very dark swamp where children are submerged, or the frozen saliva,

70

or the wounded curves resembling toad’s bellies which the pansies carry in cars and terraces while the moon strikes at them along the corners of fear. You searched for a nude who was like a river. Bull and dream that would join the wheel with the seaweed, father of your agony, camellia of your death, and would moan in the flames of your hidden Equator.

80

Because it is just that man does not search for his delight in the jungle of blood of the following morning. The sky has shores where to avoid life, and certain bodies must not repeat themselves in the dawn.

Agony, agony, dream, ferment and dream. This is the world, my friend, agony, agony. The corpses decompose under the clock of the cities. War passes weeping with a million grey rats, the rich give to their mistresses small illuminated moribunds,

and Life is not noble, nor good, nor sacred. Man can, if he wishes, lead his desire 90

through vein of coral or celestial nude: tomorrow love will be rocks, and Time a breeze which comes sleeping through the branches.

Ode to Walt Whitman

That is why I do not raise my voice, aged Walt Whitman, against the little boy who writes a girl’s name on his pillow, nor the boy who dresses himself in the bride’s trousseau in the darkness of the wardrobe, nor the solitary men in clubs who drink the water of prostitution with nausea, 100

nor the men with a green stare who love man and burn their lips in silence. But against you, yes, pansies of the cities, of tumescent flesh and unclean mind, mud of drains, harpies, unsleeping enemies of Love which distributes crowns of joy. Against you always, you who give boys drops of soiled death with bitter poison. Against you always, Fairies of North America,

Pajaros of Havana, 110

Jotos of Mexico, Sarasas of Cadiz, Apios of Seville, Cancos of Madrid,

Floras of Alicante,

Adelaidas of Portugal.’ Pansies of the world, murderers of doves! Women’s slaves, bitches of their boudoirs,

opened with the fever of fans in public squares or ambushed in frigid landscapes of hemlock.

120

Let there be no quarter! Death flows from your eyes and clusters grey flowers on the shores. Let there be no quarter! Take heed! Let the perplexed, the pure, the classicists, the noted, the supplicants, close the gates of the Bacchanalia. on the Hudson’s banks, And you, beautiful Walt Whitman, sleep

hands open. with your beard toward the Pole and your

of maricas, but with different Floras, Adelaidas: Colloquial versions 4 Pajaros, Jotos, Sarasas, Apios, Cancos, “flowers.” See note 3.

“birds” and floras means connotations. For example, pajaros means .

.

ae

»

1525

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

1526

Bland clay or snow, your tongue is calling for comrades that keep watch on your gazelle without a body. Sleep; nothing remains. A dance of walls agitates the meadows and America drowns itself in machines and lament. I want the strong air of the most profound night to remove flowers and words from the arch where you sleep, and a black boy to announce to the gold-minded whites the arrival of the reign of the ear of corn.

130

Qe

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias Translated by Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili

1. COGIDA' AND DEATH

At five in the afternoon.” It was exactly five in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet atfive in the afternoon.

A frail of lime’ ready prepared atfive in the afternoon. The rest was death, and death alone

atfive in the afternoon. The wind carried away the cottonwool atfive in the afternoon. And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel* at five in the afternoon. Now the dove and the leopard’ wrestle atfive in the afternoon.

'coaipa: Goring by a bull; also means “harvesting.” * At five .. . afternoon: The body of Sanchez Mejias, removed from a mortuary in Madrid at five in the afternoon on August 14, 1934, was carried through the streets, then transported by train to Seville for burial.

* frail of lime: A basket of lime used to disinfect a dead body. *cottonwool .. . nickel: Cottonwool suggests cotton surgical dressing; oxide (rust) suggests the color of blood; crystal suggests the doctors’ glass beakers; nickel suggests medical instruments. This stanza rather surrealistically describes the actual goring and attempts at treatment.

*dove . . . leopard: Symbols of peace and violence, respectively. The inscription on the cover of the printed edition of the poem reads “a dove . . . gathered him up.”

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, 1. Cogida and Death

20

30

40

And a thigh with a desolate horn atfive in the afternoon. The bass-string struck up atfive in the afternoon. Arsenic bells and smoke atfive in the afternoon. Groups of silence in the corners atfive in the afternoon. And the bull alone with a high heart! Atfive in the afternoon. When the sweat of snow was coming atfive in the afternoon, when the bull ring was covered in iodine atfive in the afternoon, death laid eggs in the wound atfive in the afternoon. Atfive in the afternoon. Exactly at five o'clock in the afternoon.

A coffin on wheels is his bed atfive in the afternoon. Bones and flutes resound in his ears at five in the afternoon. Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead at five in the afternoon. The room was iridescent with agony at five in the afternoon. In the distance the gangrene now comes at five in the afternoon. Horn of the lily through green groins

at five in the afternoon.

The wounds were burning like suns at five in the afternoon,

and the crowd was breaking the windows’ at five in the afternoon. At five in the afternoon.

50

Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!

It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon!

Mejias 0 n his deathbed. No of followers clamoring to see Sanchez ®the crowd. . _ windows: Suggests a crowd occurred. such incident is known to have

1527

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

1528

2. THE SPILLED BLOOD I will not see it!

Tell the moon to come’ for I do not want to see the blood

of Ignacio on the sand. I will not see it!

The moon wide open. Horse of still clouds, 60

and the grey bull ring of dreams with willows in the barreras. I will not see it!

Let my memory kindle! Warn the jasmines of such minute whiteness! I will not see it!

The cow of the ancient world

passed her sad tongue 70

over a snout of blood spilled on the sand,

and the bulls of Guisando,* partly death and partly stone, bellowed like two centuries

sated with treading the earth. No.

I do not want to see it! I will not see it!

Ignacio goes up the tiers” 80

with all his death on his shoulders. He sought for the dawn but the dawn was no more. He seeks for his confident profile

’Tell . . . come: According to tradition, the moon comes to suck up the blood of the world before turning red in a lunar eclipse.

* bulls of Guisando: Weathered, ancient stone statuary depicting bulls, in Madrid. *Ignacio . . . tiers: Lorca imagines a scene in which the bullfighter goes up the tiers of the arena.

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, 2. The Spilled Blood

and the dream bewilders him. He sought for his beautiful body and encountered his opened blood. I will not see it! I do not want to hear it spurt each time with less strength: that spurt that illuminates the tiers of seats, and spills

90

over the corduroy and the leather of a thirsty multitude. Who shouts that I should come near! Do not ask me to see it!

His eyes did not close when he saw the horns near,

but the terrible mothers'” lifted their heads. And across the ranches,

an air of secret voices rose, shouting to celestial bulls, herdsmen of pale mist. There was no prince in Seville who could compare with him, nor sword like his sword nor heart so true. Like a river of lions was his marvellous strength, and like a marble torso his firm drawn moderation. The air of Andalusian Rome®

100

110

Seville

gilded his head where his smile was a spikenard"’ of wit and intelligence. What a great torero in the ring! What a good peasant in the sierra! How gentle with the sheaves! How hard with the spurs! How tender with the dew! How dazzling in the fiesta!

120

Fates who announce the hour of these awesome presences as the Three 10terrible mothers: Lorca envisioned

death.

suggests his teeth. 1 spikenard: A white flower, common to Andalusia;

1529

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FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA How tremendous with the final

banderillas of darkness!”

But now he sleeps without end. Now the moss and the grass open with sure fingers the flower of his skull. And now his blood comes out singing; singing along marshes and meadows, sliding on frozen horns,

130

faltering soulless in the mist, stumbling over a thousand hoofs like a long, dark, sad tongue, to form a pool of agony

close to the starry Guadalquivir.””

140

Oh, white wall of Spain! Oh, black bull of sorrow! Oh, hard blood of Ignacio! Oh, nightingale of his veins! No. I will not see it! No chalice can contain it, no swallows can drink it, no frost of light can cool it, nor song nor deluge of white lilies,

no glass can cover it with silver. No.

I will not see it! 3. THE Lain Out Bopy

150

Stone is a forehead where dreams grieve without curving waters and frozen cypresses. Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.

I have seen grey showers move towards the waves raising their tender riddled arms,

to avoid being caught by the lying stone which loosens their limbs without soaking the blood.

” banderillas of darkness: Colorful, barbed darts stuck into the shoulders of the bull to aggravate him.

Guadalquivir: River in Andalusia associated with the bullfighter’s blood.

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, 3. The Laid Out Body

For stone gathers seed and clouds,

skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra: but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,

only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls. 160

Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone.

Allis finished. What is happening? Contemplate his face: death has covered him with pale sulphur

and has placed on him the head of a dark minotaur.”” Allis finished. The rain penetrates his mouth. The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,

and Love, soaked through with tears of snow, warms itself on the peak of the herd.

What are they saying? A stenching silence settles down. We are here with a body laid out which fades away, 170

with a pure shape which had nightingales and we see it being filled with depthless holes.

Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true!’ Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner, nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent. Here I want nothing else but the round eyes to see this body without a chance of rest. Here I want to see those men of hard voice. Those that break horses and dominate rivers;

those men of sonorous skeleton who sing

180

with a mouth full of sun and flint.

Here I want to see them. Before the stone. Before this body with broken reins. I want to know from them the way out for this captain strapped down by death.

I want them to show me a lament like a river which will have sweet mists and deep shores, to take the body of Ignacio where it loses itself bulls. without hearing the double panting of the '4 penumbra: A shadowy, borderline area.

and half man. to a mythical sacrificial creature, half bull 15 minotaur: The bullfighter is compared conventional pieties. cted from the reality of the dead body by 16 not true!: Lorca does not want to be distra

1531

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FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

190

Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull: loses itself in the night without song of fishes and in the white thicket of frozen smoke. I don’t want them to cover his face with handkerchiefs that he may get used to the death he carries. Go, Ignacio; feel not the hot bellowing. Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies!

4. ABSENT SOUL

200

The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree, nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house. The child and the afternoon do not know you because you have died for ever. The back of the stone does not know you,

nor the black satin in which you crumble. Your silent memory does not know you because you have died for ever. The autumn will come” with small white snails,

misty grapes and with clustered hills, but no one will look into your eyes because you have died for ever. Because you have died for ever,

210

like all the dead of the Earth, like all the dead who are forgotten in a heap of lifeless dogs. Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you. For posterity I sing of your profile and grace. Of the signal maturity of your understanding. Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth. Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.

220

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure. I sing of his elegance with words that groan, and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.

"The autumn will come: Autumn is the season following Sanchez Mejias’s death.

Gx

JorGE Luis BORGES B. ARGENTINA, 1899-1986

Jorge Luis Borges created his own version of the short story in which he expresses the modern dissolution of conventional reality by blurring the traditional line between fiction and historical scholarship. In the aftermath of World War I, many writers felt that traditional, understandable models of reality were shattered and that reality was at best fragmented. Asa native of Argentina, Borges set the stage for other experimental Latin

American writers to follow, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez (p. 1444), Julio

Cortazar, and Carlos Fuentes,' by exploring the psychological boundaries between interior and exterior reality, playing with multiple identities, and intersecting different times and places. Borges has been compared to Franz Kafka (p. 1386), whom he translated. Indeed, both were devoted to the exploration of consciousness, but while Kafka’s stories deal with the dreamlike landscapes of the emotions, Borges’s are very intellectual, drawing from the storehouse of world literature. Borges draws on esoteric literature and the wisdom traditions of world cultures to create subtle connections and unusual synchronicity in his stories. An international writer, Borges moves easily from one language to another in his work, just as his characters cross national of boundaries with ease, pursuing their livelihoods abroad. Nowhere, ve, comprehensi course, does Borges provide a magic key that unlocks a pospreviously hidden plan for the cosmos, but he tantalizes us with the —1s least at artist the —for reality that and sibility that such a key exists, . an act of the imagination Crossing Cultures.

Bornon August 24, 1899, in Buenos Aires, Argentina,

and books were Jorge Luis Borges was raised in a home where languages translator, and a was Suarez, o important. Jorge’s mother, Lenore Aceved and writer. lawyer, , teacher a was Borges, his father, Jorge Guillermos the family, with lived and English was other grandm Since his paternal about asked When Borges grew up speaking both English and Spanish. father’s my say should “I ed, the central event of his childhood, he answer as Spanish books, the library.” In that library filled with English as well father expected him His . classics of number large young Borges read a began early, writing to be a writer, and he was not disappointed. Borges translation of Irish h Spanis a his first story at age seven and publishing Aires newspaper at Buenos a in Prince” writer Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy age nine. family, then traveling In 1914 World War I broke out and the Borges Borges completed where in Europe, was stranded in Geneva, Switzerland,

Jorge Luis Borges

Although popular in Argentina, Borges’s work did not find an international audience until later in the writer’s life, and then he was showered with praise. (Charles H. Phillips/Timepix)

HOR-hay loo-EES

BOR-hays

notoriety for his experi(1914-1984), a writer from Argentina, gained 1 Cortazar . . . Fuentes: Julio Cortazar deal with Mexico’s history and its social

s’s (b. 1928) many novels mental novel Hopscotch in 1965. Carlos Fuente . writer living s famou most struggles; he is Mexico’s

1533

1534.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

collective uncon-

secondary school at the Collége de Genéve. He became proficient in Latin and French in school and taught himself German and German philosophy at home. In Spain, after the war, Borges became acquainted with a group of young writers called the Urrraists who rejected middle-class materialism and sought refuge in the artifice of poetry, in exotic images and metaphor. Returning to Buenos Aires in 1921, Borges became very active in the literary scene of that city, where from 1920 to 1930 he published four books of essays and three books of poetry. He founded three literary magazines and contributed to numerous others, including Sur (South), the most famous literary review of South America, and published three collections of unusual short stories: The Garden of Forking Paths (El jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan) in 1941, Fictions (Ficciones) in 1944, and ElAleph (1949). Borges worked in a library in Buenos Aires from 1938 to 1946, but his opposition to the dictatorship of Juan Peron, who came to power in 1946, led to his dismissal from the job. The Perénistas offered him work as a chicken inspector in the city market, but he found a teaching job instead. After the fall of Perén in 1955, Borges was made director of the National Library, a position emblematic of his love for literature and vast learning. Unfortunately, his eyesight gradually failed in the mid 1950s; concerning his appointment and his eyesight, he said, “I speak of God’s splendid irony in granting me at once 800,000 books and darkness.” He was forced to dictate his writing. In 1961 he won the International Publishers’ Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett (p. 1557). He published a final collection of stories in 1970, Doctor Brodie’s Report (El informe de Brodie). Besides traveling to various parts of the world, he spent his final years lecturing and teaching in universities, including the University of Texas and Michigan State. For most of Borges’s life his mother lived with him, but late in life he married twice. His first marriage was to Elsa Astela Millan in

scious, we know

1967, the second to his longtime secretary, Maria Kodama, in 1986, shortly

Ria

For links to

more information

about Borges, a quiz on “The Garden of Forking Paths,” and

information about Borges’s relevance

in the 21st century, see bedford stmartins.com/

worldlitcompact.

Philosophy, comparative philologies, archaeology, every-

thing has been evolving, progressing, breaking new ground. But we know little as ever about why we are born

again each morning. Despite the comings and goings of the

equally little about the meanings of our very symbols. Borges restates, ina few

allegorical pages, the circular, ceremonial

direction ofour curious, groping,

thrilling, and atrocious ignorance. — ANTHONY KERRIGAN,

critic, 1962

before he died of liver cancer in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is buried.

The Many Facets of Borges’s Mind. Early on Borges was interested in writing poetry and essays. From 1936 to 1939 he wrote a weekly column for the newspaper El Hogar in which he covered a broad range of literatures and was interested in connecting Argentinean literature to the traditions of Europe and America. His first real fame, however, came with the publication of short stories in the collections Ficciones and El Aleph. Borges was influenced by the Ipgauistic belief that reality is essentially a network of ideas rather than a collection of material sensations; thus many of the stories in these collections read like essays, with frequent references to books, authors, and translations— some real, some imaginary. The short stories take their themes from mythology, ancient religions, Gnosticism,”

*Gnosticism: An ancient sect in the Middle East whose adherents believed that hidden knowledge held the key to the universe. Throughout history Gnostics have formed secret societies with secret scriptures and have believed they understood the workings of the cosmos.

Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986

1535

Jewish mysticism,’ and various esoteric authors. Often a story’s plot involves a puzzle and a search for an answer that is intricately intertwined with obscure details and that has an unexpected twist—a kind of mind game. In “Death and the Compass,” for example, the detective Erik Lonnrot discovers the identity of a murderer by using the lore surrounding the Tetragrammaton,’ the mystical name of God, but becomes trapped in the labyrinth of his own knowledge. In Borges’s writings, the library is a symbol of the world’s knowledge; somewhere there is an answer, but it is buried under thousands, if not millions, of layers.

“The Garden of Forking Paths.” Borges’s detective story “The Garden of Forking Paths” was originally published in a collection of the same name in 1941 and eventually republished in Labyrinths (1962), an appropriate title for Borges’s writings, since he is a master at creating tantalizing mazes that can be navigated only by picking up on the nearly invisible thread of clues Borges weaves into his narration. One dimension of the story consists of Yu Tsun’s communicating the location of a British bombing target to his chief in Berlin, but another aspect entirely is the labyrinth discovered in a text by Yu Tsun’s ancestor called The Garden of Forking Paths, which in its very structure models a universe comprising multiple planes of time in which individuals play several diverse roles. Even though the detective story is resolved in the final paragraph, Borges leaves a the reader with the unmistakable impression that he or she is part of understanding. everyday transcend that relationships of network larger At times Borges’s concerns with multiple planes of consciousness of and esoteric learning are a game wherein he plays with the frontiers for a SYNCRETISTIC the mind; at other times he seems to be reaching

psymythology—one that would blend ancient wisdom with modern the with contact lost has chology. He challenges a modern society that unifyfor vision the lacks and ns meaningful symbois of its own traditio e meanderings ing whatever cultural fragments remain. After his extensiv religion, and tive compara hy, philosop y, philolog ogy, through archaeol mysGerman the from world literature, Borges offers this final epigraph InqutOther s conclude which , tic Angelus Silesius (seventeenth century) sitions 1937-1952, a collection of essays.

lesen, Freund, es ist auch genug. Im Fall du mehr willst Wesen. das selbst und t Schrif die So geh und werde selbst

When one thinks of Borges, one thinks more of a literature

than of a writer.

Borges’s stories and poems are aimed at the universe, unlike the writer with clearly defined scopes and goals.... Through-

out his vast oeuvre, one keeps discover-

ing the man of refined intellect, the

philosopher, the “writer for writers”

as he was considered some twenty years ago....”

read more, Friend, this is enough. If finally you want to spirit. the lf yourse and letter the lf Go and be yourse

— Mauricio BETANCOURT, 2001

practices that lead to ism, Jewish mysticism focuses on learning and 3 Jewish mysticism: Like all forms of mystic r hidden meanings discove to strives Cabala the Cabala or Kabala. unity with the creator. Its teachings are called of the Hebrew Scriptures. in every letter, number, and word

unspeakable name, the Hebrew alphabet said to make up god’s 4Tetragrammaton: The four letters in contain special powers. this name and its uses are believed to

YHWH;

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JORGE LUIS BORGES @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography

McMurray, George R.Jorge Luis Borges. 1980. Monegal, Emir Rodriquez. Jorge Luis Borges. 1978. Woodall, James. Borges:A Life. 1996. Criticism

Alazraki, Jaime, ed. Critical Essays on Jorge Luis Borges. 1987. Bell-Villada, Gene H. Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His Mind and Art. 1999.

DiGiovanni, Norman Thomas. Lesson of the Master: Borges and His Work. 2003. Dunham, Lowell, and Ivar Ivask, eds. The Cardinal Points of Borges. 1971. Fishburn, Evelyn, and Psiche Hughes. A Dictionary of Borges. 1990. Isbister, Rob, and Peter Standish. A Concordance to the Works of Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986. 1992.

HB PRONUNCIATION

Jorge Luis Borges: HOR-hay loo-EES BOR-hays

Cw

The Garden of Forking Paths Translated by Donald A. Yates

On page 22 of Liddell Hart’s History of World War I you will read that an attack against the Serre-Montauban line by thirteen British divisions (supported by 1,400 artillery pieces), planned for the 24th of July, 1916, had to be postponed until the morning of the 29th. The torrential rains, Captain Liddell Hart comments, caused this delay, an insignificant one, to be sure. The following statement, dictated, reread, and signed by Dr. Yu Tsun, former

professor of English at the Hochschule’ at Tsingtao, throws an unsuspected light over the whole affair. The first two pages of the document are missing. “,..and I hung up the receiver. Immediately afterwards, I recognized the voice that had answered in German. It was that of Captain Richard Madden. Madden’s presence in Viktor Runeberg’s apartment meant the end of our anxieties and— but this seemed, or should have seemed, very secondary to me—also the end of our lives. It meant that Runeberg had been arrested or murdered.’ Before the sun set on that day, Iwould encounter the same fate. Madden was implacable. Or rather, he was

obliged to be so. An Irishman at the service of England, a man accused of laxity and perhaps of treason, how could he fail to seize and be thankful for such a miraculous

"Hochschule: University (German). *Runeberg . . . murdered: A hypothesis both hateful and odd. The Prussian spy Hans Rabener, alias Viktor Runeberg, attacked with drawn automatic the bearer of the warrant for his arrest, Captain Richard Madden.

The latter, in self-defense, inflicted the wound which brought about Runeberg’s death. (Editor’s note.) [Borges provided this “Editor’s note” as part of the story.]

The Garden ofForking Paths

opportunity: the discovery, capture, maybe even the death of two agents of the German Reich? I went up to my room; absurdly I locked the door and threw myself on my back on the narrow iron cot. Through the window I saw the familiar roofs and the cloud-shaded six o’clock sun. It seemed incredible to me that that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death. In spite of my dead father, in spite of having been a child in a symmetrical garden of Hai Feng, was I—now—going to die? Then I reflected that everything happens to a man precisely, precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air, on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that really is hap-

pening is happening to me... The almost intolerable recollection of Madden’s horselike face banished these wanderings. In the midst of my hatred and terror (it means nothing to me now to speak of terror, now that I have mocked Richard Madden, now that my throat yearns for the noose) it occurred to me that that tumultuous and doubtless happy warrior did not suspect that I possessed the Secret. The name of the exact location of the new British artillery park on the River Ancre. A bird streaked across the gray sky and blindly I translated it into an airplane and that airplane into many (against the French sky) annihilating the artillery station with vertical bombs. If only my mouth, before a bullet shattered it, could cry out that secret name so it could be heard in Germany . .. My human voice was very weak. How might I make it carry to the ear of the Chief? To the ear of that sick and hateful man who knew nothin ing of Runeberg and me save that we were in Staffordshire and who was waiting .I . vain for our report in his arid office in Berlin, endlessly examining newspapers. if as silence, said out loud: I must flee. I sat up noiselessly, in a useless perfection of vain mere the Madden were already lying in wait for me. Something—perhaps my pockets. I through look me made nil— were resources my proving ostentation of the square and found what I knew I would find. The American watch, the nickel chain the apartment, coin, the key ring with the incriminating useless keys to Runeberg’s not did I which notebook, a letter which I resolved to destroy immediately (and red and blue pencil, the handkerdestroy), a crown, two shillings and a few pence, the

my hand and weighed it in chief, the revolver with one bullet. Absurdly, I took it in that a pistol report can be order to inspire courage within myself. Vaguely I thought The telephone book heard at a great distance. In ten minutes my plan was perfected. the message; he lived in a listed the name of the only person capable of transmitting suburb of Fenton, less than a half hour’s train ride away. carried to its end a plan whose lam a cowardly man. Isay it now, now that I have ion was terrible. I didn’t do it for perilous nature no one can deny. I know its execut ry which imposed upon me the Germany, no. I care nothing for a barbarous count from England—a modest man — abjection of being a spy. Besides, I know of a man with him for scarcely an hour, who for me is no less great than Goethe.’ I talked it because I sensed that the Chief but during that hour he was Goethe ...I did the innumerable ancestors who merge somehow feared people of my race-—for

(1749-1832), a German writer. (See p. 553.) 3 Goethe: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1537

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JORGE LUIS BORGES

within me. I wanted to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies. Besides, I had to flee from Captain Madden. His hands and his voice could call at my door at any moment. I dressed silently, bade farewell to myself in the mirror, went downstairs, scrutinized the peaceful street and went out. The station was not far

from my home, but I judged it wise to take a cab. I argued that in this way I ran less risk of being recognized; the fact is that in the deserted street I felt myself visible and vulnerable, infinitely so. Iremember that I told the cab driver to stop a short distance before the main entrance. I got out with voluntary, almost painful slowness; I was going to the village of Ashgrove but I bought a ticket for a more distant station. The train left within a very few minutes, at eight-fifty. Ihurried; the next one would leave at nine-thirty. There was hardly a soul on the platform. I went through the coaches; I remember a few farmers, a woman dressed in mourning, a young boy who was reading with fervor the Annals of Tacitus,* a wounded and happy soldier. The coaches jerked forward at last. A man whom I recognized ran in vain to the end of the platform. It was Captain Richard Madden. Shattered, trembling, I shrank into the far corner of the seat, away from the dreaded window. From this broken state I passed into an almost abject felicity. I told myself that the duel had already begun and that I had won the first encounter by frustrating, even if for forty minutes, even if by a stroke of fate, the attack of my adversary. I argued that this slightest of victories foreshadowed a total victory. I argued (no less fallaciously) that my cowardly felicity proved that I was a man capable of carrying out the adventure successfully. From this weakness I took strength that did not abandon me. I foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past. Thus I proceeded as my eyes of a man already dead registered the elapsing of that day, which was perhaps the last, and the diffusion of the night. The train ran gently along, amid ash trees. It stopped, almost in the middle of the fields. No one announced the name of the station. “Ashgrove?” I asked a few lads on the platform. “Ashgrove,” they replied. I got off. A lamp enlightened the platform but the faces of the boys were in shadow. One questioned me, “Are you going to Dr. Stephen Albert’s house?” Without waiting for my answer, another said, “The house is a long way from here, but you won’t get lost if you take this road to the left and at every crossroads turn again to your left.” I tossed them a coin (my last), descended a few stone steps and started down the solitary road. It went downhill, slowly. It was of elemental earth; overhead the branches were tangled; the low, full moon seemed to accompany me. For an instant, I thought that Richard Madden in some way had penetrated my desperate plan. Very quickly, I understood that that was impossible. The instructions to turn always to the left reminded me that such was the common procedure

“Tacitus: Roman historian (55-117 c.£.).

The Garden of Forking Paths

for discovering the central point of certain labyrinths. I have some understanding of labyrinths: Not for nothing am I the great grandson of that Ts’uiPén who was governor of Yunnan and who renounced worldly power in order to write a novel that might be even more populous than the Hung Lu Meng? and to construct a labyrinth in which all men would become lost. Thirteen years he dedicated to these heterogeneous tasks, but the hand of a stranger murdered him—and his novel was incoherent and no one found the labyrinth. Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms...I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars. Absorbed in these illusory images, I forgot my destiny of one pursued. I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world. The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day worked on me, as well as the slope of the road which eliminated any possibility of weariness. The afternoon was intimate, infinite. The road descended and forked among the now confused meadows. A high-pitched, almost syllabic music approached and receded in the shifting of the wind, dimmed by leaves and distance. I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fire-

rusty flies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets. Thus I arrived before a tall,

gate. Between the iron bars I made out a poplar grove and a pavilion. I understood

The music suddenly two things, the first trivial, the second almost unbelievable:

reason I had came from the pavilion, and the music was Chinese. For precisely that there was whether openly accepted it without paying it any heed. I do not remember continued. a bell or whether I knocked with my hand. The sparkling of the music that the trees From the rear of the house within a lantern approached: a lantern form of a the had that sometimes striped and sometimes eclipsed, a paper lantern the light for face, his see drum and the color of the moon. A tall man bore it. I didn't see that “I e: languag blinded me. He opened the door and said slowly, in my own see the to wish doubt no the pious Hsi P’éng persists in correcting my solitude. You garden?” I replied, disconcerted, “The I recognized the name of one of our consuls and

garden?” “The garden of forking paths.”

with incomprehensible cerSomething stirred in my memory and I uttered tainty, “The garden of my ancestor Tsui Pén.”

in.” “your ancestor? Your illustrious ancestor? Come hood. We came to a library of child my of those like gged The damp path zigza in yellow silk several volumes of Eastern and Western books. I recognized bound

very famous also called The Story of the Stone (1791), a long, 5 Hung Lu Meng: The Dream of the Red Chamber, Chinese novel.

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JORGE LUIS BORGES

the Lost Encyclopedia, edited by the Third Emperor of the Luminous Dynasty® but never printed. The record on the phonograph revolved next to a bronze phoenix. I also recall a famille rose’ vase and another, many centuries older, of that shade of blue which our craftsmen copied from the potters of Persia... Stephen Albert observed me with a smile. He was, as I have said, very tall, sharpfeatured, with gray eyes and a gray beard. He told me that he had been a missionary in Tientsin “before aspiring to become a Sinologist.” We sat down—I on a long, low divan, he with his back to the window and a tall circular clock. I calculated that my pursuer, Richard Madden, could not arrive for at least an hour. My irrevocable determination could wait. “An astounding fate, that of Tsui Pén,” Stephen Albert said. “Governor of his

native province, learned in astronomy, in astrology, and in the tireless interpretation of the canonical books, chess player, famous poet and calligrapher —he abandoned all this in order to compose a book and a maze. He renounced the pleasures of both tyranny and justice, of his populous couch, of his banquets and even of erudition— all to close himself up for thirteen years in the Pavilion of the Limpid Solitude. When he died, his heirs found nothing save chaotic manuscripts. His family, as you may be aware, wished to condemn them to the fire; but his executor—a Taoist or Buddhist

monk— insisted on their publication.” “We descendants of Ts’ui Pén,” I replied, “continue to curse that monk. Their publication was senseless. The book is an indeterminate heap of contradictory drafts. I examined it once: In the third chapter the hero dies, in the fourth he is alive. As for the other undertaking of Ts’ui Pén, his labyrinth . . .” “Here is Ts’ui Pén’s labyrinth,” he said, indicating a tall lacquered desk. “An ivory labyrinth!” I exclaimed. “A minimum labyrinth.” “A labyrinth of symbols,” he corrected. “An invisible labyrinth of time. To me, a barbarous Englishman, has been entrusted the revelation of this diaphanous mystery. After more than a hundred years, the details are irretrievable; but it is not hard to conjecture what happened. Ts’ui Pén must have said once: I am withdrawing to write a book. And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Everyone imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and

the same thing. The Pavilion of the Limpid Solitude stood in the center of a garden that was perhaps intricate; that circumstance could have suggested to the heirs a physical labyrinth. Ts’ui Pén died; no one in the vast territories that were his came upon the labyrinth; the confusion of the novel suggested to me that it was the maze. Two circumstances gave me the correct solution of the problem. One: the curious legend that Ts’ui Pén had planned to create a labyrinth which would be strictly infinite. The other: a fragment of a letter I discovered.”

°Third . . . Dynasty: The Yung-lo emperor of the Ming dynasty who commissioned an extensive encyclopedia in the fifteenth century. ’ famille rose: Pink family (French), referring to Chinese enamelware.

The Garden of Forking Paths

Albert rose. He turned his back on me for a moment; he opened a drawer of the

black and gold desk. He faced me and in his hands he held a sheet of paper that had once been crimson, but was now pink and tenuous and cross-sectioned. The fame of Tsui Pén as a calligrapher had been justly won. I read, uncomprehendingly and with fervor, these words written with a minute brush by a man of my blood: I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths. Wordlessly, I returned the sheet. Albert continued: “Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular

one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely. | remembered too that night which is at the middle of the Thousand and One Nights when Scheherezade (through a magical oversight of the copyist) begins to relate word for word the story of the Thousand and One Nights, establishing the risk of coming once again to the night when she must repeat it, and thus on to infinity. I imagined as well a Platonic, hereditary work, transmitted from father to son, in which each new individual adds a chapter or corrects with pious care the pages of his elders. These conjectures diverted me; but none seemed to correspond, not even remotely, to the contradictory chapters of Ts’ui Pén. In the midst of this perplexity, I received from Oxford the manuscript you have examined. I lingered, naturally, on the sentence: I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden offorking paths. Almost instantly, I understood: ‘the garden of forking paths’ was the chaotic novel; the phrase ‘the various futures (not to all)’ suggested to the me the forking in time, not in space. A broad rereading of the work confirmed

several alternatives, theory. In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with Pén, he chooses— Ts’ui of fiction the in others; he chooses one and eliminates the

—all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times simultaneously of the which themselves also proliferate and fork. Here, then, 1s the explanation Fang door; his at calls stranger a secret; a has say, novel’s contradictions. Fang, let us the kill can Fang outcomes: possible several are resolves to kill him. Naturally, there so and die, can both they escape, can both they intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, each one is the point of forth. In the work of Ts’ui Pén, all possible outcomes occur; converge: For labyrinth this of paths the departure for other forkings. Sometimes, my enemy, are you pasts possible the of one in example, you arrive at this house, but we pronunciation, incurable my to yourself in another, my friend. If you will resign shall read a few pages.” was unquestionably that of an His face, within the vivid circle of the lamplight,

immortal. He read with slow old man, but with something unalterable about it, even first, an army marches to a the In r. chapte precision two versions of the same epic rocks and shadows makes the men battle across a lonely mountain; the horror of the . In the second, the same army undervalue their lives and they gain an easy victory place; the resplendent battle seems traverses a palace where a great festival is taking they win the victory. I listened with to them a continuation of the celebration and perhaps less admirable in themselves proper veneration to these ancient narratives, blood and were being restored to me my than the fact that they had been created by

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JORGE LUIS BORGES

by a man of a remote empire, in the course of a desperate adventure, on a Western isle. Iremember the last words, repeated in each version like a secret commandment: Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die. From that moment on, I felt about me and within my dark body an invisible, intangible swarming. Not the swarming of the divergent, parallel, and finally coalescent armies, but a more inaccessible, more intimate agitation that they in some manner prefigured. Stephen Albert continued: “T don’t believe that your illustrious ancestor played idly with these variations. I don’t consider it credible that he would sacrifice thirteen years to the infinite execution of a rhetorical experiment. In your country, the novel is a subsidiary form ofliterature; in Ts ui Pén’s time it was a despicable form. Ts’ui Pén was a brilliant novelist, but he was also a man of letters who doubtless did not consider himself a mere novelist. The testimony of his contemporaries proclaims — and his life fully confirms— his metaphysical and mystical interests. Philosophic controversy usurps a good part of the novel. I know that of all problems, none disturbed him so greatly nor worked upon him so much as the abysmal problem of time. Now then, the latter is the only problem that does not figure in the pages of the Garden. He does not even use the word that signifies time. How do you explain this voluntary omission?” I proposed several solutions—all unsatisfactory. We discussed them. Finally, Stephen Albert said to me: “In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?” I thought a moment and replied, “The word chess.” “Precisely,” said Albert. “The Garden ofForking Paths is an enormous riddle, or parable, whose theme is time; this recondite cause prohibits its mention. To omit a word always, to resort to inept metaphors and obvious periphrases, is perhaps the most emphatic way of stressing it. That is the tortuous method preferred, in each of the meanderings of his indefatigable novel, by the oblique Ts’ui Pén. I have compared hundreds of manuscripts, I have corrected the errors that the negligence of the copyists has introduced, I have guessed the plan of this chaos, I have reestablished —I believe I have reestablished—the primordial organization, I have translated the entire work: It is clear to me that not once does he employ the word ‘time.’ The explanation is obvious: The Garden ofForking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts’ui Pén conceived it. In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer,® your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were

unaware

of one another for centuries, embraces

all

possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us. In the present one, which a favorable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another,

“Newton and Schopenhauer: Isaac Newton (1642-1727), an English mathematician; Arthur Schopenhauer

(1788-1860), a German philosopher.

Pablo Neruda, 1904-1973

1543

while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost.”

“Tn every one,” I pronounced, not without a tremble to my voice, “I am grateful to you and revere you for your re-creation of the garden of Ts’ui Pén.” “Not in all,” he murmured with a smile. “Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. In one of them I am your enemy.” Once again I felt the swarming sensation of which I have spoken. It seemed to me that the humid garden that surrounded the house was infinitely saturated with invisible persons. Those persons were Albert and I, secret, busy, and multiform in other dimensions of time. I raised my eyes and the tenuous nightmare dissolved. In the yellow and black garden there was only one man; but this man was as strong as a statue ... this man was approaching along the path and he was Captain Richard Madden. “The future already exists,” I replied, “but I am your friend. Could Isee the letter again?” Albert rose. Standing tall, he opened the drawer of the tall desk; for the moment his back was to me. I had readied the revolver. I fired with extreme caution. Albert fell uncomplainingly, immediately. I swear his death was instantaneous—a lightning stroke. conThe rest is unreal, insignificant. Madden broke in, arrested me. I have been Berlin to ated communic have I y; abominabl out won have I demned to the gallows.

it in the secret name of the city they must attack. They bombed it yesterday; I read Sinologist learned the of mystery the England to offered the same papers that deciStephen Albert who was murdered by a stranger, one Yu Tsun. The Chief had of uproar the (through indicate to was problem my knew phered this mystery. He to do so than the war) the city called Albert, and that I had found no other means to my innumerable conkill a man of that name. He does not know (no one can know)

trition and weariness.

aw

PABLO NERUDA B. CHILE, 1904-1973

to have written in Not only is Pablo Neruda one of the greatest poets eth century to have Spanish, he is also one of the finest poets of the twenti William

an, and written in any language. Like William Blake, Walt Whitm politics, and pery, histor which Butler Yeats, Neruda created poems in shed devotion to unaba a’s Nerud age. langu sonal experience coalesce into

passionate love for the his native Chile is reminiscent of Walt Whitman’s a’s poems are intimately people and places of the United States. Nerud ted in the Whitman, he deligh tied to the soil and sea of Chile, and, like

e grace like spoons, salt, common things around him, objects of simpl

For links to more information

about Neruda, see

bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

1544

PABLO NERUDA

and socks. He also incorporated history into his poems, especially the conquest and exploitation of Latin America by Europe and the United States. His large body of work helped bring to the people of Chile and all of Latin America a sense of pride and an identity separate from that of their conquerors. Although he won a number of international peace awards and literincluding the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, Neruda did not prizes, ary become widely known or popular in the United States in his lifetime; his bold mixture of leftist politics and poetry alienated American critics and publishers. In his later years, without relinquishing his Chilean roots, Neruda searched for bonds that would reach across national boundaries and draw men and women together in a joint human enterprise.

Exposure to World Culture. Pablo Neruda was born Ricardo Eliezer Neftali Reyes y Basoalto on July 12, 1904, in the southern Chilean town of Parral. His father, Jose del Carmen Reyes, was a railroad worker. His mother, Rosa de Basoalto, died when Pablo was three or four years old; his father’s second wife, Trinidad Candia, was described by Neruda as “the tutelary angel of my childhood.” They moved south of Parral to the small town of Temuco, where Pablo spent his childhood in a lush environment of dense forest, sultry rains, and pungent odors—the sensorium of experience at the center of Neruda’s poems. As a child he announced, “I’m going out to hunt poems,” and he was enormously successful: From childhood on he seemed to see his life in terms of language, of fitting words to the occasion. To that end Neruda was blessed with a mentor early on, the poet Gabriela Mistral, a headmistress in Temuco and the first Latin American writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (1945).

Mistral took Neruda under her wing and exposed him to European literature. In 1920 at the age of sixteen, he published poems and articles under his new name, Pablo Neruda, after a nineteenth-century Czech writer,

Jan Neruda. He adopted the pseudonym out of fear of ridicule from his family. Mistral recommended him for a scholarship when he was seventeen to study French literature at the Instituto Pedagogica in Santiago, the cultural and political capital of Chile. Leading a bohemian lifestyle in the capital city, Neruda read poets like the FRENCH SyMBoLisTs Arthur P- 929

Rimbaud (1854-1891) and Charles Baudelaire. Between 1923 and 1926 he

wrote five books of poetry, but it was the second, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada, 1924), that brought him praise and national recognition at the age of twenty. Like other Latin American countries, Chile rewards its writers with

diplomatic posts, and for more than fifteen years Neruda was a Chilean consul in various countries. At the young age of twenty-three he was sent to Southeast Asia; he lived in Rangoon, Colombo, Singapore, and Batavia between 1927 and 1932, bearing witness to a troubled period when coun-

tries were struggling for their independence from Europe. Neruda’s poems of this time, which show the influence of SURREALISM, were collected in Residence on Earth (Residencia en la tierra). In 1933 he returned to Chile and was then assigned to Buenos Aires, then to Madrid, where Residence on Earth, Parts | and II, were published in 1935 to much acclaim

Pablo Neruda, 1904-1973

1545

and the admiration of Spanish poets. When the SpANIsH CIvIL WAR broke out in 1936 and Neruda’s friend the brilliant poet Federico Garcia Lorca

p. 1518

was executed by the Civil Guard, Neruda, whose poems had become angry and sad, became outspokenly anti-Fascist. In an interview he spoke of those years: “The most intense memories... are those of my life in Spain—that great brotherhood of poets. It was terrible to see that republic of friends destroyed by the civil war. My friends were scattered: Some were exterminated right there—like Garcia Lorca and Miguel

Hernandez;' others went into exile.” Into Politics.

Neruda was recalled from Madrid by the Chilean govern-

ment in 1937, then reassigned to Spain and France to aid Republican Spanish refugees. Then from 1939 to 1943 he acted as Chilean consul to

Mexico before returning to Santiago, where he became a member of the central committee of the Chilean Communist Party and was elected to the senate. In a series of letters beginning in 1947, Neruda accused Chile’s president, Gonzalez Videla, of betraying Chile in dealings with the United States. When he lost his case against Videla before Chile’s Supreme Court and Communism was declared illegal by Chile’s Congress, Neruda was forced into exile; he traveled to Mexico, France, Italy, the Soviet Union,

and China. Chile had been unique in Latin America in that it democratically elected presidents, a tradition that ended with the military dictatorship of Pinochet in 1974. But even within its democracies, there had been an

ongoing power struggle in Chile in the modern period between the conservative upper classes and the working classes— not unlike other Latin American countries, in which the distribution of wealth was radically disproportionate. Chilean labor unions had clamored for recognition s and peasants had demanded land reform. Neruda’s evident sympathie with the downtrodden began to appear in his poetry. A major collection of Neruda’s poems, General Song (Canto general, the world’s 1950) —340 poems grouped into fifteen sections—caught y, and geograph history, n America Latin of n depictio its attention with ent governm U.S. of the politics of its dictators. Neruda raised the hackles people n America Latin of tion officials with his depiction of the exploita Company. The and resources by huge corporations like the United Fruit while he criteven States United the of people the ed poet himself celebrat he had paid earlier icized U.S. corporations and politicos; a few years m Lincoln Abraha and frontier, tribute to American writers, the American

ng the belief that the in “Let the Rail Splitter Awake” (1948), expressi

s. United States shared in the destiny of all the America World Fame.

the world, Neruda was translated and honored all over

and ’6os. Settling into his especially in socialist countries, in the 1950s Chile, Neruda carried on in famous house, Isla Negra, on the Pacific coast

ce. h poet whose work dealt with social injusti 'Miguel Hernandez (1910-1942): Spanis

On the one hand is the soil of the conti-

nent itself, before names were devised for it, with its natural riches, its fertility, and its prototypal

people augmented in the course of time by

men of all races who felt . . . a flame of

freedom and charity in their hearts, from fray Bartolomé de las Casas or Alonso de Ercilla, to San

Martin, Lincoln, and Marti to the striker

jailed in Iquique or an ejidatario from Sonora: all Americans. On the other

hand, there are rapacious and covetous men, from Columbus to Cortés, to Rosas

and Garcia Moreno, to a Somoza or a Tru-

jillo and the masters

of Anaconda Copper and United Fruit. — Luis MONGUIO, 1961,

on the theme of

General Song

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PABLO NERUDA

a love affair with the Chilean people while cultivating a fellowship with a wide circle of poets both at home and abroad. His poetic voice mellowed and his attitude toward life was celebratory in more than a dozen new collections, including The Stones ofChile (Las piedras de Chile, 1969), Isla

Negra: A Notebook (Memorial de Isla Negra, 1964), and World’s End (Fin de mundo, 1969).

Neruda was appointed the Chilean ambassador to France when Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970, the first duly elected socialist in the Americas, and Chile declared a national holiday when the poet was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1971. Neruda returned to Chile in 1973 in poor health and died in a Santiago clinic on September 23, heartbroken by the military coup that had led to the assassination of Allende just days before, on September u, and led to the brutally repressive dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Neruda’s Memoirs (Confiso que he vivido: Memorias)

was

published

in 1974; an English translation

appeared in 1977. Nine additional volumes of his poetry were published / posthumously. A Sampling of Poems. Despite his active commitment to politics, Neruda’s poetic output was enormous; a 1962 edition of his poems, set in small print, ran to 1,832 pages. The genius of his poetry lies in its earthy imagery, in his use of all the senses to create a strong and vigorous language. Neruda was instrumental in helping to free Latin American writers from artificial restraints and cerebral quaintness. The poems on the following pages are a sampling from the different periods of his long Now let us use the

good word “Americanism.” Neruda

constantly reminds us of Whitman,

much more for his

deep breath and that ease of the American man, who knows nei-

ther hindrances nor obstacles, than for

his verse of huge proportions. His Ameri-

canism is present in his works in the form

of a vigorous freedom, in a blessed

audacity, andina

bitter fertility. — GABRIELA MISTRAL

writing career. The first two, “Ode with a Lament” and “Sexual Water,”

are from Residence on Earth, which presents Neruda’s version of the post-World War I “wasteland,” a disheveled world unhinged from destiny and purpose. There is an underlying sadness in these poems even as Neruda looks to surreal images in the hope of discovering a deeper pattern of connections through dreamlike associations. “Ode with a Lament” immediately links a conventional image with the startling phrase, “O pressure of doves.” A dazzling combination of traditional poetic images juxtaposed with exotic metaphors follow as the poem develops the themes of death, sorrow, and broken things. “Sexual Water” is an extended treatment of sexual energy or libido. Like Walt Whitman, Neruda was devoted to the world of real objects and he loved to make lists and to shade them with potential danger. An ongoing theme of these poems seems to be that if there is any way to reassemble the world, it must begin with the physical world and not with some abstract, metaphysical system. General Song (1950), the large collection of Neruda’s poems, repre-

sents a change in the poet’s writing style and purpose. His earlier surreal poems, which were keyed to the natural world, had developed a personal, even private lexicon of meaning. In General Song, Neruda connects with the history of the Americas, with the intent to communicate the ongoing struggle for its heart and soul. “Hymn and Return,” collected in Part VII

Pablo Neruda, 1904-1973

of General Song, points to the new direction of the whole volume: Neruda’s love affair with Chile will spread throughout the Americas. In a visionary sequence of poems early in General Song, The Heights of Macchu Picchu, inspired by a pilgrimage to the ancient Inca stronghold in the Peruvian Andes, the poet arrives at Macchu Picchu and connects with an ancient civilization. It is as if he finds a source of hope in the airy vastness of the Andean stronghold. The succeeding sections deal with the greed, power, wealth, suffering, and hope in the social and political struggles of the colonial history of the Americas. The prosaic language of “The United Fruit Co.” borders on simple propaganda in poetic form. Its declarative statements are direct indictments of various dictators—listed by name—and ruthless corporations that exploited various Latin American countries for cheap labor and natural resources. The concluding stanza about the suffering of Indians is similar to a number of other Latin American works that convey the evils of European colonialism through the plight of the Indian in the Americas. In Elementary Odes (Odas elementales, 1954 and 1956) Neruda uses a

simple voice as a means of reaching Latin American working classes and produces a charming series of poems about simple objects like socks, tomatoes, and lemons. “Poet’s Obligation,” published in Full Powers (Plenos poderes, 1962), echoes Walt Whitman’s empathy for other and diverse human beings and his desire to give voice to the silent. The poet, according to Neruda, has an obligation to free those people who live in prisons—whether they be prison cells, factories, or offices. m

FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography

Teitelboim, Volodia. Neruda: An Intimate Biography. 199). Editions

:

trans. 1995. Neruda, Pablo. Neruda’s Garden: An Anthology of Odes. Maria Jacketti, 1994. trans. ft, Krabbenho Ken . Odes to Common Things. History and Culture

ofthe Poets. 1970. Rodman, Selden. “Pablo Neruda’s Chile.” In South America

Criticism Costa, Rene de. The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. 1979. of Pablo Neruda. 1981. Duran, Manuel, and Margery Safir. Earth Tones: The Poetry

in Neruda’s Canto General. Riess, Frank. The World and the Stone: Language and Imagery 1972. Prophecy. 1982. Santi, Enrico Mario. Pablo Neruda, The Poetics of

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PABLO NERUDA

1548

Qw

Ode with a Lament Translated by H. R. Hays

O girl among the roses, O pressure of doves, O citadel of fishes and rosebushes,

Your souis a bottle full of dry salt And your skin is a bell full of grapes. Unfortunately Ihave nothing to give you except fingernails Or eyelashes, or melted pianos,

Or dreams which pour from my heart in torrents, Dusty dreams that race like black riders, Dreams full of speed and affliction. I can only love you with kisses and poppies, With garlands wet by the rain,

Gazing at yellow dogs and horses red as ashes. I can only love you with waves behind me,

20

Between wandering gusts of sulphur and pensive waters, Swimming toward cemeteries that flow in certain rivers With wet pasturage growing above sad tombs of plaster, Swimming through submerged hearts And pale catalogues of unburied children. There is much death, many funereal events In my forsaken passions and desolate kisses, There is a water that falls on my head,

While my hair grows, A water like time, a black torrential water,

With a nocturnal voice, with a cry Of a bird in the rain, like an interminable Shadow of a wet wing sheltering my bones, While I dress myself, while

30

Interminably I look at myself in mirrors and windows, I hear someone calling me, calling me with sobs, With a sad voice rotted by time. You are on foot, on the earth, full

Of fangs and lightings. You generate kisses and you kill ants. You weep with health, with onions, with bees,

With burning alphabet. You are like a blue and green sword And you ripple when touched like a river.

Sexual Water

Come to my soul dressed in white, like a branch

Of bleeding roses and cups of ashes, Come with an apple and a horse,

40

Because there is a dark room there and a broken candelabra, Some twisted chairs that wait for winter, And a dead dove with a number.

Sexual Water Translated by H. R. Hays

Running in single drops, In drops like teeth, In thick drops of marmalade and blood, Running in drops, The water falls,

Like a sword of drops Like a rending river of glass, It falls biting, Striking the axis of symmetry, hitting on the Ribs ofthe soul,

Breaking castoff things, soaking the darkness.

It is only a gust, damper than tears, A liquid, a sweat, a nameless oil,

A sharp movement, Creating itself, thickening itself, The water falls,

In slow drops, Toward the sea, toward its dry ocean, Toward its wave without water. 20

, I see along summer and a death rattle coming out of a granary Cellars, cicadas, Towns, stimuli, Habitations, girl children

Sleeping with hands on their hearts, Dreaming with pirates, with fire, I see ships, I see trees of spinal cord Bristling like furious cats, I see blood, daggers, and women’s stockings,

1549

1550

PABLONERUDA 30

I see men’s hair, I see beds, I see corridors where a virgin screams,

I see blankets and organs and hotels. I see stealthy dreams, I accept the preceding days, And also origins and also memories,

Like an eyelid dreadfully raised by force I am watching. And then there is this sound: A red noise of bones, An adhering of flesh, And legs yellow as grain stalks joining together. I am listening among explosions ofkisses, I am listening, shaken among breathing and sobs.

40

I am watching, hearing With half my soul on sea and half my soul on land, And with both halves of my soul I look at the world.

And though I close my eyes and cover my heart Completely, I see a deaf water falling In deaf drops.

50

It is like a hurricane of gelatin, Like a cataract of sperm and medusas. I see a muddy rainbow flowing. I see its waters passing through my bones.

Qe

Hymn and Return Translated by Robert Bly

Country, my country, I turn my blood in your direction. But I am begging you the way a child begs its mother, with tears: take this blind guitar and these lost features. I left to find sons for you over the earth,

Hymn and Return

I left to comfort those fallen with your name made of snow, I left to build a house with your pure timber, I left to carry your star to the wounded heroes. 10

Now I| want to fall asleep in your substance. Give me your clear night of piercing strings, your night like a ship, your altitude covered with stars. My country: I want to change my shadow. My country: I want to have another rose. I want to put my arm around your narrow waist

and sit down on your stones whitened by the sea and hold the wheat back and look deep into it.

I am going to pick the thin flower of nitrate,’ 20

Iam going to feel the icy wool of the field, and staring at your famous and lonesome sea-foam [ll weave with them a wreath on the shore for your beauty. Country, my country, entirely surrounded by aggressive water and fighting snow, the eagle and the sulphur come together in you, and a drop of pure human light burns in your antarctic hand of ermine and sapphire, lighting up the hostile sky.

30

My country, take care of your light! Hold up your stiff straw of hope into the blind and frightening air. All of this difficult light has fallen on your isolated land, this future of the race,

that makes you defend a mysterious flower alone, in the hugeness of an America that lies asleep.

to the workmen economy in Chile; they can be very dangerous ‘nitrate: Nitrates are an important part of the who mine them. [Editors’ note. |

1551

1552

PABLO NERUDA

Qw

The United Fruit Co. Translated by Robert Bly

When the trumpet sounded, it was all prepared on the earth, and Jehovah parceled out the earth to Coca-Cola, Inc., Anaconda, Ford Motors, and other entities:

The Fruit Company, Inc. reserved for itself the most succulent, the central coast of my own land,

10

20

the delicate waist of America. It rechristened its territories as the “Banana Republics” and over the sleeping dead, over the restless heroes who brought about the greatness, the liberty and the flags, it established the comic opera: abolished the independencies, presented crowns of Caesar, unsheathed envy, attracted the dictatorship of the flies, Trujillo flies, Tacho flies, Carias flies, Martinez flies,

Ubico flies,’ damp flies of modest blood and marmalade,

drunken flies who zoom over the ordinary graves, circus flies, wise flies

well trained in tyranny.

30

Among the bloodthirsty flies the Fruit Company lands its ships, taking off the coffee and the fruit; the treasure of our submerged territories flows as though on plates into the ships.

"Trujillo flies . . . Ubico flies: Dictators in Central America: Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina in the Dominican Republic, 1930-38 and 1942-52; Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez in El Salvador, 1931-44; Tiburcio Carias Andino in Honduras, 1933-49; Jorge Ubico in Guatemala, 1931-44. [Editors’ note. ]

The Heights of Macchu Picchu

40

Meanwhile Indians are falling into the sugared chasms of the harbors, wrapped for burial in the mist of the dawn: a body rolls, a thing that has no name, a fallen cipher, a cluster of dead fruit thrown down on the dump.

The Heights of Macchu Picchu Translated by Jack Schmitt

VI And so I scaled the ladder of the earth amid the atrocious maze of lost jungles up to you, Macchu Picchu. High citadel of terraced stones,

at long last the dwelling of him whom the earth did not conceal in its slumbering vestments. In you, as in two parallel lines,

the cradle of lightning and man was rocked in a wind of thorns. 10

Mother of stone, sea spray of the condors. Towering reef of the human dawn. Spade lost in the primal sand.

This was the dwelling, this is the site: here the full kernels of corn rose and fell again like red hailstones.

Here the golden fiber emerged from the vicufia' to clothe love, tombs, mothers,

the king, prayers, warriors.

for its soft, Andes; it is related to the llama and well known 1 vicufia: An animal that was found wild in the

shaggy wool.

1553

PABLO NERUDA

1554

20

Here man’s feet rested at night beside the eagle’s feet, in the high gory retreats, and at dawn

they trod the rarefied mist with feet of thunder and touched lands and stones until they recognized them in the night or in death.

I behold vestments and hands, the vestige of water in the sonorous void, the wall tempered by the touch of a face that beheld with my eyes the earthen lamps, that oiled with my hands the vanished 30

wood: because everything — clothing, skin, vessels, words, wine, bread—

is gone, fallen to earth.

And the air flowed with orange-blossom fingers over all the sleeping: a thousand years of air, months, weeks of air,

of blue wind, of iron cordillera,” like gentle hurricanes of footsteps polishing the solitary precinct of stone. * cordillera: A mountain range.

Ode to Salt Translated by Robert Bly

I saw the salt in this shaker in the salt flats. I know you will never believe me, but it sings, the salt sings, the hide

of the salt plains, it sings through a mouth smothered

by earth. I shuddered in those deep

Ode to Salt

20

solitudes when I heard the voice of the salt in the desert.

Near Antofagasta° the entire

salt plain speaks: itisa broken voice,

a song full of grief. 30

Then in its own mines rock salt, a mountain of buried light,

a cathedral through which light passes, crystal of the sea, abandoned by the waves. And then on every table on this earth, salt, 40

your nimble body pouring out the vigorous light over our foods. Preserver

of the stores of the ancient ships, you were

an explorer 50

in the ocean, substance

going first over the unknown, barely open

routes of the sea-foam.

Dust of the sea, the tongue

receives a kiss

of the night sea from you: taste recognizes the ocean in each salted morsel,

a city in northern Chile

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PABLO NERUDA

60

and therefore the smallest, the tiniest wave of the shaker

brings home to us not only your domestic whiteness but the inward flavor of the infinite.

Cw

Poet’s Obligation Translated by Alastair Reid

To whoever is not listening to the sea this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up in house or office, factory or woman

or street or mine or harsh prison cell: to him I come, and, without speaking or looking, I arrive and open the door of his prison, and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent, a great fragment of thunder sets in motion the rumble of the planet and the foam, 10

the raucous rivers of the ocean flood, the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,

and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.

20

So, drawn on by my destiny, I ceaselessly must listen to and keep the sea’s lamenting in my awareness, I must feel the crash of the hard water and gather it up in a perpetual cup so that, wherever those in prison may be, wherever they suffer the autumn’s castigation, I may be there with an errant wave, I may move, passing through windows, and hearing me, eyes will glance upward saying “How can I reach the sea?” And I shall broadcast, saying nothing, the starry echoes of the wave,

a breaking up of foam and of quicksand, a rustling of salt withdrawing, the grey cry of sea-birds on the coast.

30

So, through me, freedom and the sea will make their answer to the shuttered heart.

Qe

SAMUEL BECKETT B. IRELAND, 1906-1989

Samuel Beckett, Irish-born playwright, novelist, story writer, poet, and translator, emigrated to Paris where he created a substantial body of work in which many memorable characters search for meaning in a confusing and enigmatic world. In his mature work Beckett is guided by a sense of comedy that nevertheless rarely dilutes his bleak view of life. While he is comparable to a variety of literary figures— including his mentor, the Irish word wizard James Joyce—his spiritual kinship extends to an even more diverse lot, including Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, Dutch artist Bram van Velde,' and comedic film actors such as Buster Keaton.” Like many writers of his time, Beckett contributed to the broad literary and artistic movement that today is called MopERNISM. Influenced by the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud (p. 1429; 1856-1939), which

sought the cure to neurosis in the individual’s buried past, and by Carl Jung (1875-1961), who found in world myths and symbols evidence of a

Samuel Beckett

Beckett in middle age. (© Topham/The Image Works)

collective unconscious, modernist writers and artists endeavored to express the hidden inner life of the individual. A member of the French Underground during the Nazi occupation of France in the Second World War, Beckett emerged from the experience as one of the most profound voices of the European generation that sought to understand the human predicament —“VassurD,” as the French called it. Although he shared the interests of many of his peers, Beckett, characteristically, worked alone. While Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus (p. 1580), and other French

writers created a literary movement based on I’absurd, Beckett wrote largely without recognition in the Paris that they, too, inhabited. Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot (1952) will probably number among the great works of literature of all time. His early writings in English, influenced by Joyce, and his adept translations of poetry and fiction from several European languages quickly established his reputation as a master stylist. But he separated himself from such prose masters as Joyce later in with his career, making his own mark with dramatic dialogues written

poetic brevity. Time and again Beckett’s characters drive home a point, so often painfully, by saying the unsayable in simple language. Beckett writing to English in strove after simplicity that he switched from writing his in French because, he said, he was less tempted by the subtleties of adopted tongue.

the principal subject of an article he wrote on 1 Bram van Velde (1895-1981): A close friend of Beckett’s and

to be describing his own position when the state of painting in modern Europe. Beckett frequently appears the object” and of the artist’s “fidelity to for writing of van Velde: He speaks of modern art being “in mourning ity, of its act, even if only of itself, of its impossibil failure.” so that, being “obliged to act, he makes an expressive

obligation.”

of film comedians that included Charlie Chaplin and 2 Buster Keaton (1895-1966): One of the early generation comedy and was pleased when Buster Keaton slapstick of art the of admirer Harold Lloyd. Beckett was a great 1964.

cinema, a short film produced in was engaged to play in Film, Beckett’s only work for the

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SAMUEL BECKETT

| www | For links to

more information about Beckett, see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

Early Life. Samuel Beckett was born on the outskirts of Dublin on April 13, 1906. Driven to apply himself while still very young by a domineering Protestant mother who recognized his extraordinary intellectual abilities, he was later educated at Trinity College, Dublin, receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1928. Although he joined the Trinity College faculty, he resigned his post at the end of 1931, disappointing friends and supporters. Beckett lived miserably for a time in London, traveled in Germany, and finally settled in Paris in 1936. He wrote his two earliest novels, Murphy (1938) and Watt (written between 1942 and 1944), in English but

was already writing in French at the start of World War II. Although Beckett, a habitual loner except for infrequent forays into society, would probably have preferred to shun the world and devote himself solely to his writing, the times would not allow it. Despite his professed desire to remain neutral in politics, Beckett joined the French resistance against the German occupation in 1941, following the German invasion of France and the fall of Paris in 1940. At first, the resistance did little more than remind the French people that the war against Germany was ongoing outside France. But soon Beckett’s apartment in Paris became a “drop” for microfilm photographs destined for Britain of German installations. Matters heated up in 1942, when some of Beckett’s friends were arrested, and many Parisians, primarily Jews, were either shot or sent to concentration camps. Beckett moved south to Roussillon, then a free city but later occupied by the Germans as they, too, moved

south. Beckett stayed a step ahead of the German Gestapo, or secret police, until the war ended. He was awarded the croix de guerre, the French medal for bravery, in 1945. The Siege in the Room.

Restored to Paris in 1946, Beckett began to

conduct what he called “the siege in the room.” Biographer Anthony Cronin describes this as “a reduction to bare necessities, being driven back on oneself, being stripped of all resources save the ultimate ones of desperation and self-reliance.” Writing in French, Beckett produced many of his major works in these years: the two novels Molloy (1951) and Malone Dies (1951), Waiting for Godot (1952), and the novel The Unnameable (1953). He followed these with a number of other plays and short

pieces originally intended for radio, including Krapp’s Last Tape (1958). By now Beckett lived in some degree of comfort. His reputation had been established and his small circle of friends proved impressively loyal. Even so, he suffered from a number

of minor illnesses: cysts, rashes,

insomnia, dizzy spells, stomach pains, bad teeth, panic attacks, and hypochondria. He had been the victim of a stabbing on a Paris street in 1938, possibly the result of an argument with a pimp, which resulted in lung damage that lasted for the rest of his life. But as he approached old age his complaints lessened. The grimness of his work did not. He referred to Texts for Nothing, thirteen short pieces written after The Unnameable, as “nothing more than the grisly afterbirth” of that novel. In 1969, largely as a result of the success of Waiting for Godot, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The citation for the prize

Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989

remarked that it was for “a body of work that, in new forms of fiction and the theatre, has transmuted the destitution of modern man into his exaltation.” Beckett himself remained somewhat aloof from the award, commenting that he was “lacking in Nobel fiber” and worrying aloud whether he would even try to write again after all the commotion. He asked his publisher, Jerome Lindon, to accept the award in his place. In fact, though he lived twenty years longer, he wrote little new work after receiving the honor, devoting himself instead to the staging of his existing dramas. He died in December 1989.

The Beckett Man. All Beckett’s works present in one form or another what one of his biographers has called the “Beckett man” —a seriocomic character who rejects the central Western European beliefs in the life of reason, progress, and liberal optimism. Typically unemployed and without ambition in the ordinary sense, the Beckett man reels from his memory of education, society’s attempt to instill in him such traditional values as honor, dignity, and courage. His experience of love is limited, though he dimly recalls the influence of his mother when he was a child. He regards physical distress, including paralysis, as ordinary and even vaguely pleasurable. The only virtue he appears to possess is a capacity to endure. Beckett’s characters become increasingly enfeebled, even paralyzed, in later works until in The Unnameable the main character is reduced to a creature who hangs in a bottle and has only the power of reflection. After the war, Beckett began to question the stance of his earlier

characters like Murphy and Watt who had cleverly tried to deny or demolish their relationship to what they called “the big world.” Perhaps moved by his participation in and knowledge of the real dangers of the French resistance, Beckett detected a certain arrogance in his early work. Instead of infusing new characters with his own learning and cleverness,

he left them alone in the world, which they saw as an ominous and unknowable place. The more vulnerable Beckett made them to outside forces, the more their stature tended to grow in the eyes of the audience. conOf the novel Molloy (written between 1947 and 1949), Beckett said, “I

ceived Molloy and what followed the day I realized my own stupidity.” Waiting for Godot.

Waiting for Godot (written between 1947 and 1949,

the characand published in French in 1952) followed Molloy. In Godot, character ious myster a meet to ters Vladimir and Estragon assemble

occasionally rise to named Godot. Both complain of small maladies, both

ely give up again. the expectation that Godot will arrive, but both ultimat way or another: The theme of the play is repeated throughout in one imprisoned by are noted, has “Nothing to be done.” The actors, as a critic Not that place. same the to back comes their own dialogue, which always Pozzo, is It Godot. not is it but comes, e someon nothing ever happens; to only Godot as y whom Estragon and Vladimir first mistakenly identif he where fair, the for leaves disavow their hasty error. Eventually, Pozzo

1559

What is the essence of the experience of

being? asks Beckett. And so he begins to

strip away the inessentials. — Martin Essuin,

critic, 1961

1560

SAMUEL

Throughout Beckett’s work we

can find evidence of his conviction that

everything is hopeless, meaningless,

purposeless, and, above all, agonizing to endure. — GEORGE WELLWARTH,

critic, 1964

BECKET

has determined to sell his slave, Lucky. But in the second act of the play, Pozzo and Lucky return through the same door through which they had left. Both are enfeebled: Pozzo is blind and Lucky is unable to speak. At the end of each of the two acts there appears a boy who announces that Godot will not come today, “but surely tomorrow.” But Godot does not arrive the next day either. Vladimir summarizes the action of the play ina speech during the second act: Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?

That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be?

Waiting for Godot is a work that has been interpreted as operating on many levels: as slapstick comedy; as a play about the death of God (God-ot could be heard as a pun in English); as an EXISTENTIALIST drama

in which man is left alone to act in the world but can find no basis for action; as a play about time and its destruction of possibility. But no matter how one sees it, in the end the theatergoer is caught up in the spare beauty of the play’s dialogue, the amount of interest it creates in the midst of apparent hopelessness, the surprising degree to which one identifies with the characters, however weak they are. A play about despair, Waiting for Godot maintains an atmosphere of faint, unreasonable hope that carries both the audience and the actors, however reluctantly, through to the drama’s conclusion. Krapp’s Last Tape. Beckett saw his writings of the late 1940s as the height of his creativity, disparaging subsequent works for their lack of development. In 1956 he commented, “For some authors writing gets easier the more they write. For me it gets more and more difficult. For me the area of possibilities gets smaller and smaller.” Beckett made an effort to escape this narrowing field of possibilities in a radio play called All that Fall, broadcast in 1956. The piece recounts memories of Beckett’s youth in the Irish landscape, a theme more accessible to the listening audience than was his other work at the time. But while All that Fall was scripted in a public voice, Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), Beckett's next major play, returned fiercely to inner reflection. Beckett, who had not so much as seen a tape recorder when he wrote this play, imagined a reclusive, ineffectual drunkard on his sixty-ninth birthday listening to tapes he had recorded on his twenty-eighth and thirty-ninth birthdays. (To account for the earlier use of the tape recorder, invented only around 1950, the play is set on “a late evening in the future.”) The unsettling bleakness of the play emerges from the conflicts and disharmonies between the three persons that constitute Krapp at twenty-eight, thirty-nine, and sixty-nine. @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biographies

Bair, Deidre. Samuel Beckett: A Biography. 1978. Cronin, Anthony. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. 1999.

Krapp’s Last Tape Criticism

Esslin, Martin, ed. Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays. 1965. Fletcher, John, and John Spurling. Beckett the Playwright. 1985. Harvey, Lawrence. Samuel Beckett: Poet and Critic. 1970. Kenner, Hugh. Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study. 1965. , ed. A Reader’s Guide to Samuel Beckett. 1973. Mercier, Vivien. Beckett/Beckett. 1977.

Pattie, David. The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Beckett. 2001.

Gw

Krapp’s Last Tape

A late evening in the future. Krapp’s den. Front center a small table, the two drawers of which open towards audience.

Sitting at the table, facing front, i.e., across from the drawers, a wearish' old man: Krapp.

Rusty black narrow trousers too short for him. Rusty black sleeveless waistcoat, four capacious pockets. Heavy silver watch and chain. Grimy white shirt open at neck, no collar. Surprising pair of dirty white boots, size ten at least, very narrow and pointed.

White face. Purple nose. Disordered grey hair. Unshaven. Very nearsighted (but unspectacled). Hard of hearing. Cracked voice. Distinctive intonation.

Laborious walk.

d boxes containing On the table a tape recorder with microphone and a number of cardboar reels of recorded tapes. stage in darkness. Table and immediately adjacent area in strong white light. Rest of at his watch, fumbles in his Krapp remains a moment motionless, heaves a great sigh, looks bunch of keys, raises tt to small a out takes pockets, takes out an envelope, puts it back, fumbles, first drawer, peers unlocks stoops, He table. his eyes, chooses a key, gets up and moves to front of drawer, unlocks locks back, it puts it, at into it, feels about inside it, takes out a reel of tape, peers at it, locks peers banana, large a out second drawer, peers into it, feels about inside it, takes banana, strokes halts, stage, of edge to drawer, puts keys back in his pocket. He turns, advances staring ss, motionle remains and mouth his peels it, drops skin at his feet, puts end of banana in at edge fro and to pacing begins and aside vacuously before him. Finally he bites off the end, turns banana. eating vely meditati way, either of stage, in the light, i.e. not more than four or five paces

1 wearish: Lean, wizened.

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SAMUEL

BECKETT

He treads on skin, slips, nearly falls, recovers himself, stoops and peers at skin and finally pushes it, still stooping, with his foot over the edge of stage into pit. He resumes his pacing, finishes banana, returns to table, sits down, remains a moment motionless, heaves a great sigh, takes keys from his pockets, raises them to his eyes, chooses key, gets up and moves to front of table, unlocks second drawer, takes out a second large banana, peers at it, locks drawer, puts back keys in his pocket, turns, advances to edge of stage, halts, strokes banana, peels it, tosses skin into pit, puts end of banana in his mouth and remains motionless, staring vacuously before him. Finally he has an idea, puts banana in his waistcoat pocket, the end emerging, and goes with all the speed he can muster backstage into darkness. Ten seconds. Loud pop of cork. Fifteen seconds. He comes back into light carrying an old ledger and sits down at table. He lays ledger on table, wipes his mouth, wipes his hands on the front of his waistcoat, brings them smartly together and rubs them.

KRAPP (briskly): Ah! (He bends over ledger, turns the pages, finds the entry he wants, reads.) Box... thrree... spool... five. (He raises his head and stares front. With

relish.) Spool! (Pause.) Spooool! (Happy smile. Pause. He bends over table, starts peering and poking at the boxes.) Box... thrree...thrree... four... two... (with surprise) nine! good God! ... seven... ah! the little rascal! (He takes up box, peers at it.) Box thrree. (He lays it on table, opens it, and peers at spools inside.) Spool .. . (he peers at ledger)... five... (he peers at spools)... five... five... ah! the little scoundrel! (He takes out a spool, peers at it.) Spool five. (He

lays it on table, closes box three, puts it back with the others, takes up the spool.) Box thrree, spool five. (He bends over the machine, looks up. With relish.) Spooool! (Happy smile. He bends, loads spool on machine, rubs his hands.) Ah! (He peers at ledger, reads entry at foot of page.) Mother at rest at last... Hm... The black ball... (He raises his head, stares blankly front. Puzzled.) Black ball? ... (He peers again at ledger, reads.) The dark nurse. . . (He raises his head, broods, peers again at ledger, reads.) Slight improvement in bowel condition . . . Hm... Memorable... what? (He peers closer.) Equinox, memorable equinox. (He raises his head, stares blankly front. Puzzled.) Memorable equinox? ... (Pause. He shrugs his shoulders, peers again at ledger, reads.) Farewell to— (he

turns the page) —love. He raises his head, broods, bends over machine, switches on and assumes listening posture, i.e. leaning forward, elbows on table, hand cupping ear towards machine, face front.

TAPE (strong voice, rather pompous, clearly Krapp’s at a much earlier time): Thirtynine today, sound as a— (Settling himself more comfortably he knocks one of the boxes off the table, curses, switches off, sweeps boxes and ledger violently to the ground, winds tape back to beginning, switches on, resumes posture.) Thirty-nine today, sound as a bell, apart from my old weakness, and intellectually I have now every reason to suspect at the... (hesitates)

... crest of the wave—or

there-

abouts. Celebrated the awful occasion, as in recent years, quietly at the Winehouse. Not a soul. Sat before the fire with closed eyes, separating the grain from the husks. Jotted down a few notes, on the back of an envelope. Good to be back in my den, in my old rags. Have just eaten I regret to say three bananas and only with difficulty refrained from a fourth. Fatal things for a man with my

Krapp’s Last Tape

condition. (Vehemently.) Cut em out! (Pause.) The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness round me]

feel less alone. (Pause.) In

a way. (Pause.) I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to... (hesitates)... me. (Pause.) Krapp. Pause.

The grain, now what I wonder do I mean by that, I mean... (hesitates)... I suppose I mean those things worth having when all the dust has—when all my dust has settled. I close my eyes and try and imagine them. Pause. Krapp closes his eyes briefly.

Extraordinary silence this evening, I strain my ears and do not hear a sound. Old Miss McGlome always sings at this hour. But not tonight. Songs of her girlhood, she says. Hard to think of her as a girl. Wonderful woman though. Connaught,’ I fancy. (Pause.) Shall L sing when I am her age, if I ever am? No. (Pause.) Did I sing as a boy? No. (Pause.) Did I ever sing? No. Pause.

Just been listening to an old year, passages at random. I did not check in the book, but it must be at least ten or twelve years ago. At that time I think I was still living on and off with Bianca in Kedar Street. Well out of that, Jesus yes!

Hopeless business. (Pause.) Not much about her, apart from a tribute to her eyes. Very warm. I suddenly saw them again. (Pause.) Incomparable! (Pause.) Ah well... (Pause.) These old P.M.s’ are gruesome, but I often find them— (Krapp switches off, broods, switches on) —a help before embarking on a new. . . (hesitates)... retrospect. Hard to believe I was ever that young whelp. The voice! Jesus! And the aspirations! (Brief laugh in which Krapp joins.) And the resolutions! (Brief laugh in which Krapp joins.) To drink less, in particular. (Brief laugh of Krapp alone.) Statistics. Seventeen hundred hours, out of the preceding eight thousand odd, consumed on licensed premises’ alone. More than 20%, say 40% of his waking life. (Pause.) Plans for a less... (hesitates) . . engrossing sexual

life. Last illness of his father. Flagging pursuit of happiness. Unattainable laxation. Sneers at what he calls his youth and thanks to God that it’s over. (Pause.) False ring there. (Pause.) Shadows of the opus... magnum.’ Closing with a— (brief laugh) —yelp to Providence. (Prolonged laugh in which Krapp joins.) What remains of all that misery? A girl in a shabby green coat, on a railway-station platform? No? Pause.

When I look—

darkness. Ten seconds. Krapp switches off, broods, looks at his watch, gets up, goes backstage into Brief burst of seconds. Ten cork. Third seconds. Ten cork. Pop of cork. Ten seconds. Second quavering song. 2 Connaught: Northwestern county of Ireland. store.

3P.M.s: Postmortems.

Sopus... magnum: Magnum opus, Latin for “great work.”

“licensed premises: A pub or liquor

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KRAPP (sings):

Now the day is over, Night is drawing nigh-igh, Shadows—

Fit of coughing. He comes back into light, sits down, wipes his mouth, switches on, resumes his listening posture.

TAPE: —back on the year that is gone, with what I hope is perhaps a glint of the old eye to come, there is of course the house on the canal where mother lay a-dying, in the late autumn, after her long viduity (Krapp gives a start), and the— (Krapp switches off, winds back tape a little, bends his ear closer to machine, switches on) — a-dying, after her long viduity, and the —

Krapp switches off, raises his head, stares blankly before him. His lips move in the syllables of “viduity.” No sound. He gets up, goes backstage into darkness, comes back with an enormous dictionary, lays it on table, sits down, and looks up the word.

KRAPP (reading from dictionary): State—or condition of being—or remaining —a widow—or widower. (Looks up. Puzzled.) Being—or remaining? . . . (Pause. He peers again at dictionary. Reading.) “Deep weeds of viduity” ... Also of an animal, especially a bird...the vidua or weaver-bird ... Black plumage of male ... (He looks up. With relish.) The vidua-bird! Pause. He closes dictionary, switches on, resumes listening posture.

TAPE: — bench by the weir® from where I could see her window. There I sat, in the biting wind, wishing she were gone. (Pause.) Hardly a soul, just a few regulars, nursemaids, infants, old men, dogs. I got to know them quite well—oh by appearance of course I mean! One dark young beauty I recollect particularly, all white and starch, incomparable bosom, with a big black hooded perambulator, most funereal thing. Whenever I looked in her direction she had her eyes on me. And yet when I was bold enough to speak to her—not having been introduced— she threatened to call a policeman. As if I had designs on her virtue! (Laugh. Pause.) The face she had! The eyes! Like .. . (hesitates)... chrysolite!’ (Pause.) Ah well... (Pause.)

I was there when—(Krapp

switches off, broods,

switches on again)—the blind went down, one of those dirty brown roller affairs, throwing a ball for a little white dog, as chance would have it. |happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments. (Pause.) The dog’s moments. (Pause.) In the end I held it out to him and he took it in his mouth, gently, gently. A small, old, black, hard, solid rubber ball. (Pause.) I shall feel it, in my hand, until my dying day. (Pause.) I might have kept it. (Pause.) But I gave it to the dog.

°weir: Millpond.

7 chrysolite: A pale green semiprecious stone.

Krapp’s Last Tape Pause.

Ah well... Pause.

Spiritually a year of profound gloom and indigence until that memorable night in March, at the end of the jetty, in the howling wind, never to be forgotten, when suddenly I saw the whole thing. The vision, at last. This I fancy is what I have chiefly to record this evening, against the day when my work will be done and perhaps no place left in my memory, warm or cold, for the miracle that . . . (hesitates) ... for the fire that set it alight. What I suddenly saw then was this, that the belief I had been going on all my life, namely— (Krapp switches off impatiently, winds tape forward, switches on again)—great granite rocks the foam flying up in the light of the lighthouse and the wind-gauge spinning like a propellor, clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most— (Krapp curses, switches off, winds tape forward, switches on again) —unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with the light of the understanding and the fire— (Krapp curses louder, switches off, winds tape forward, switches on again) — my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side. Pause.

Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited. Pause.

Here I end—

Krapp switches off, winds tape back, switches on again.

—upper lake, with the punt, bathed off the bank, then pushed out into the stream and drifted. She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively.

I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on, and she agreed, without opening her eyes. (Pause.) I asked her to look at me and after a few moments— (pause)—after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low.) Let me in. (Pause.) We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing, before the stem! (Pause. ) Ilay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But side. under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to

Pause.

Past midnight. Never knew— the banana, takes it out, Krapp switches off, broods. Finally he fumbles in his pockets, encounters back envelope, looks at peers at it, puts it back, fumbles, brings out the envelope, fumbles, puts Sound of bottle against glass, his watch, gets up, and goes backstage into darkness. Ten seconds. He comes back a little then brief siphon. Ten seconds. Bottle against glass alone. Ten seconds.

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BECKETT

unsteadily into light, goes to front of table, takes out keys, raises them to his eyes, chooses key, unlocks first drawer, peers into it, feels about inside, takes out reel, peers at it, locks drawer, puts keys back in his pocket, goes and sits down, takes reel off machine, lays it on dictionary, loads virgin reel on machine, takes envelope from his pocket, consults back of it, lays it on table, switches on, clears his throat, and begins to record.

KRApP: Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that. Thank God that’s all done with anyway. (Pause.) The eyes she had! (Broods, realizes he is recording silence, switches off, broods. Finally.) Everything there, everything, all the— (Realizes this is not being recorded, switches on.) Everything there, everything on this old muckball, all the light and dark and famine and feasting of... (hesitates)... the ages! (In a shout.) Yes! (Pause.) Let that go! Jesus! Take his mind off his homework! Jesus!

(Pause. Weary.) Ah well, maybe he was right. (Pause.) Maybe he was right. (Broods. Realizes. Switches off. Consults envelope.) Pah! (Crumples it and throws it

away. Broods. Switches on.) Nothing to say, not a squeak. What’s a year now? The sour cud and the iron stool. (Pause.) Revelled in the word spool. (With relish.)

Spooool! Happiest moment of the past half million. (Pause.) Seventeen copies sold, of which eleven at trade price to free circulating libraries beyond the seas. Getting known. (Pause.) One pound six and something, eight I have little doubt. (Pause.) Crawled out once or twice, before the summer was cold. Sat shivering

in the park, drowned in dreams and burning to be gone. Not a soul. (Pause.) Last fancies. (Vehemently.) Keep ’em under! (Pause.) Scalded the eyes out of me

reading Effie’ again, a page a day, with tears again. Effie. . . (Pause.) Could have been happy with her, up there on the Baltic, and the pines, and the dunes. (Pause.) Could I? (Pause.) And she? (Pause.) Pah! (Pause.) Fanny came in a

couple of times. Bony old ghost of a whore. Couldn’t do much, but I suppose better than a kick in the crutch. The last time wasn’t so bad. How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I’d been saving up for her all my life. (Pause. ) Went to Vespers once, like when I was in short trousers. (Pause. Sings.) Now the day is over,

Night is drawing nigh-igh, Shadows— (coughing, then almost inaudible) — of the evening Steal across the sky. (Gasping.) Went to sleep and fell off the pew. (Pause.) Sometimes wondered in the night if a last effort mightn’t— (Pause.) Ah finish your booze now and get to your bed. Go on with this drivel in the morning. Or leave it at that. (Pause.) Leave it at that. (Pause.) Lie propped up in the dark—and wander. Be again in the dingle’ on a Christmas Eve, gathering holly, the red-berried. (Pause.) Be again on Croghan on a Sunday morning, in the haze, with the bitch, stop and listen to the bells. (Pause.) And so on. (Pause.) Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery.

(Pause.) Once wasn’t enough for you. (Pause.) Lie down across her.

* Effie: Effi Briest (1895), a novel by Theodor Fontane.

° dingle: Wooded hollow.

Naguib Mahfouz, 1911-2006

1567

Long pause. He suddenly bends over machine, switches off, wrenches off tape, throws it away, puts on the other, winds it forward to the passage he wants, switches on, listens staring front.

TAPE: — gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on, and she agreed, without opening her eyes. (Pause.) I asked her to look at me and after a few moments— (pause)— after a few moments she did, but

the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low.) Let me in. (Pause.) We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing, before the stem! (Pause.) I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side. Pause. Krapp’s lips move. No sound.

Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited. Pause.

Here I end this reel.

Box—(pause)— three, spool—

(pause) —five. (Pause.)

Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back.

Krapp motionless staring before him. The tape runs on in silence. CURTAIN

ax

Nacuis

MAHFOUZ

B. EGYPT, 1911—2006 When Naguib Mahfouz received the Nobel Prize in 1988, he was the first Arabic writer to be so recognized. Although he was Egypt's premier novelist and deserving of such a distinction for his work, the prize was widely regarded in the Arab world as recognition for Arabic literature generally. Mahfouz and fellow Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim had been pioneers in creating modern Arabic literature, al-Hakim largely in drama, Mahfouz in fiction. Both writers had managed to create, indeed invent, a new Arabic literary idiom, one that was free of the formality and remoteness

of classical literary Arabic but that also had a refinement and a versatility an that contemporary colloquial Arabic lacked. The prize was seen as language the remaking in acknowledgment of both men’s achievement America, and establishing a literature comparable to those of Europe, and Asia.

Creating a Modern Arabic Literature.

After its golden age in the ninth,

into decline. When tenth, and eleventh centuries, Arabic literature went

Naguib Mahfouz

Mahfouz was thefirst Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize in literature. (© Topham/The Image Works)

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NAGUIB

Ria For links to more information

about Mahfouz and a quizon “Zaabalawi,” see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

nuh-GEEB mah-FOOZ

MAHFOUZ

the Ottoman empire established Turkish as the language of commerce and government in the early modern period, Arabic literature virtually disappeared. As the Ottomans lost power in the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries, however, Arabic was revived, but the hiatus in its use

as a literary language meant that there were no models for such modern literary forms as the novel. Traditional Arabic literature was almost exclusively poetry. Those who hoped to revive Arabic literature and make it modern had to discover or create a literary and accessible language and adapt modern literary forms to the Islamic culture. A Career in Government Service. Born in 1911 in the Gamaliya district of Cairo, the seventh child in a middle-class family of modest means, Naguib Mahfouz spent his earliest years in the crowded districts of the old city. He attended government schools and graduated with a degree in philosophy from the University of Cairo in 1934. After graduation he decided to become a professional writer and worked for a few years as a journalist before entering the Egyptian civil service in 1939, where he worked for the next thirty-two years. There he adapted novels for the movies and television before going on to become the director of the national Cinema Organization, the governmental agency that manages the film industry in Egypt. He retired from the civil service in 1971.

ALiterary Career. Mahfouz’s first book, The Whisper of Madness, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1938. He continued to write during his years with the civil service and in his retirement, producing more than forty novels and fourteen volumes of short stories. His writing career can be divided into four periods. From 1939 to 1944, Mahfouz set

out to write a series of historical novels modeled after the novels of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), the Scottish writer whose Waverley novels, treat-

The novelist serves as an “informer that engages in

re-creating a collective memory and thus produces and

ing the history of Scotland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were written as an allegory of Scotland’s emergence into nationhood and national identity. Mahfouz planned to trace the history of Egypt from ancient times to his own day. He completed only three of the thirty books he planned to write, all on ancient Egypt, and in them indirectly critiqued contemporary Egypt. The Struggle for Thebes (1944), for example, was interpreted as an allegory, or a symbolic representation, of the British occupation and the presence in Egypt of a ruling aristocracy of foreigners. Many of Mahfouz’s novels are a fictional representation of the history and contemporary situation of Egypt, articulating the author’s view that the novelist serves as an “informer that engages in re-creating a collective memory and thus produces and offers knowledge of a given society and an alternative articulation of that society’s history.”

offers knowledge of a given society and an

Social Realism.

alternative articula-

stage of his writing career, during which he produced the SOCIAL-REALIST novels about contemporary Egypt for which he is widely known. The Cairo Trilogy, made up of Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street,

tion of that society’s history. — NacuiB MAHFouz

With A New Cairo (1945), Mahfouz entered a second

written in the early fifties but not published until 1956 and 1957, trace

Naguib Mahfouz, 1911-2006

Cairo, c. 1912

This street scene shows the great Mohammed-el-Worde mosque in the background. (Library of Congress, LC USZ62 099022 )

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NAGUIB

Through works rich in nuance — now clear-sightedly realis-

tic, now evocatively ambiguous —

[Mahfouz] has formed an Arabic narrative art that

applies to all mankind. — SWEDISH ACADEMY FOR THE NOBEL

AWARDS, 1988

MAHFOUZ

three generations of a Cairo family from 1918 to 1944. In the tumultuous period between the two world wars, Egypt went through continuous political and social upheaval, much of it involving the place of Britain in Egyptian affairs and the growing movement for Egyptian independence. The repeated attempts to get rid of the British army, to expel foreigners who controlled the Egyptian government and economy, and to replace a corrupt monarchy with a constitutional government boiled over into revolution in 1919 and again in the 1950s. Meanwhile a rapidly growing population exacerbated the social inequities and poverty that plagued the nation. Mahfouz’s realistic novels about the suffering and struggles of the middle and lower classes chronicle the human consequences of the government’s and the foreign powers’ neglect of the people of Egypt. Edward Fox describes politics in Mahfouz’s books as “simply another of the evils that afflict humankind, a force whose harm one may be lucky enough to avoid.” Mahfouz may have temporarily suspended this persistent cynicism in the early fifties, in hopes that Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970),

the Egyptian military officer who led the army coup that deposed the corrupt king Farouk in 1952, would bring positive political change. Nasser, named the first president of the republic of Egypt in 1956, sought to modernize Egypt and to improve the lives of the poor through such measures as land reform. Mahfouz had completed the Cairo trilogy before Nasser came to power in 1952 but delayed its publication until 1956, when

he lost hope that Nasser would make a difference in the lives of the people. Mahfouz’s novels of the sixties openly criticize the Nasser regime.

Existential Modernism and Arabic Traditions. After the publication of the trilogy, Mahfouz’s work changed again. The transitional novel, published in 1959 and translated as Children of Gebelawi and Children of the Alley, is a history of mankind in which God, Adam, Moses, Jesus, and

Muhammad appear as figures in a modern family saga that is also an allegory of mankind’s religious history. Unable to secure a publisher in Egypt, Mahfouz published the book in Lebanon. It was subsequently attacked for taking license with sacred history and was banned in nearly every Islamic country, even though its theme could be said to be how greed for material things takes humanity away from God. Mahfouz further developed this theme in his EXISTENTIALIST and MODERNIST novels of the 1960s, works such as The Thief and the Dogs (1961) that probe the inner workings of an individual’s mind, making use of STREAM-OFCONSCIOUSNESS and SURREALIST techniques. In the fourth stage of his career, beginning in about the mid seventies, Mahfouz turned from European modernism to the traditions of Arabic literature, drawing on Arabian Nights and other Arabic classics and folklore for novels like Arabian Nights and Days (1982) and The Journey ofIbn Fattouma (1983).

zah-bah-LAH-wee

“Zaabalawi.” Written in the early 1960s, Mahfouz’s story “Zaabalawi” raises many of the same concerns as the controversial Children of the Alley. Like that novel, the story is concerned with the secularization of Egyptian life and the loss of religious traditions. The narrator’s search for Zaabalawi is a quest for his own spiritual roots, for the truths hidden in

Zaabalawi

the memories of old men living in the older parts of Cairo and for an understanding that transcends the rational and scientific explanations of things. @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Background Allen, Roger M. A. The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction. 1982. Criticism

El-Enany, Rasheed, ed. Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit ofMeaning. 1993. Gordon, Hayim. Naguib Mahfouz’s Egypt. 1990. Le Gassick, Trevor, ed. Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz. 1991. Mikhail, Mona. Studies in the Short Fiction ofMahfouz and Idris. 1992. Somekh, Sasson. “‘Zaabalawi’— Author, Theme, and Technique,” Journal of Arabic Literature, | (1970), 24-35.

@

PRONUNCIATION

Hassanein: hah-sah-NANE Naguib Mahfouz: nuh-GEEB mah-FOOZ Qamar: kah-MAR

Tabakshiyya: tah-bahk-SHEE-yah Umm al-Ghulam: OOM

ahl-goo-LAHM

Wanas al-Damanhouri: wah-NAHS ahl-dah-mahn-HOO-ree

Zaabalawi: zah-bah-LAH-wee

Qw

Zaabalawi Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies

Finally I became convinced that I had to find Sheikh' Zaabalawi. The first time I had heard of his name had been in a song:

Oh what’s become of the world, Zaabalawi? They've turned it upside down and taken away its taste.

It had been a popular song in my childhood, and one day it had occurred to me to demand of my father, in the way children have of asking endless questions: “Who is Zaabalawi?” He had looked at me hesitantly as though doubting my ability to understand true the answer. However, he had replied, “May hisblessing descend upon you, he’sa have would I him for e not it Wer . troubles and worries saint of God, a remover of

-died miserably—” Sy

——

eee

men. ' Sheikh: Title of respect, especially for older, important

1571

NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

1572

In the years that followed, I heard my father many a time sing the praises of this good saint and speak of the miracles he performed. The days passed and brought with them many illnesses, for each one of which I was able, without too much trouble and at a cost I could afford, to find a cure, until [ became afflicted with that

illness for which no one possesses a remedy. When I had tried everything in vain and -was overcome by despair, I remembered by chance what I had heard in my childhood: Why, I asked myself, should I not seek out Sheikh Zaabalawi? I recollected my father saying that he had made hisacquaintance in Khan Gaafar’ at the house of Sheikh Qamar, one of those sheikhs who practiced law in the religious courts, and so I took myself off to his house. Wishing to make sure that he was still living there, I

made inquiries of a vendor of beans whom I found in the lower part of the house. “Sheikh Qamar!” he said, looking at me in amazement. “He left the quarter ages ago. They say he’s now living in Garden City and has his office in al-Azhar Square.”” I looked up the office address in the telephone book and immediately set off to the Chamber of Commerce Building, where it was located. On asking to see Sheikh ~ Qamar, I was ushered into a room just as a beautiful woman with a most intoxicat-

< ing perfume was leaving it. The man received me with a smile and motioned me ; toward a fine leather-upholstered chair. Despite the thick soles of my shoes, my feet ?

—were conscious ofthe lushness ofthecostly carpet. The man wore a lounge suit and was smoking a cigar; his manner of sitting was thatsomeone-welt-satisfied of both

with himself and with his worldly possessions. The took of warm welcome he gave me left no doubt in my-mind-that-he thought me a prospective client, and I felt acutely embarrassed at encroaching upon his valuable time. “Welcome!” he said, prompting me to speak. “Tam the son of your old friend Sheikh Ali al-Tatawi,” I answered so as to put an end to my equivocal position. A certain languor was apparent in the glance he cast at me; the languor was not total in that he had not as yet lost all hope in me. “God rest his soul,” he said. “He was a fine man.” The very pain that had driven me to go there now prevailed upon me to stay.

“He told me,” I continued, “of a devout saint named Zaabalawi whom he met at Your Honor’s. I am in need of him, sir, if he be still in the land of the living.” The languor became firmly entrenched in his eyes, and it would have come as no surprise if he had shown the door to both me and my father’s memory. “That,” he said in the tone of one who has made up his mind to terminate the conversation, “was a very long time ago and I scarcely recall him now.” Rising to my feet so as to put his mind at rest regarding my intention of going, I asked, “Wa a saint?” “We used to regard him as a man of miracles.” “And where coul nd him today?” Tasked, making another move toward the door.

* Khan Gaafar: A shopping district in Cairo. 3

al-Azhar Square: A section of Cairo near a famous mosque and the university. .

.

.

.

Zaabalawi

“To the best of my knowledge he was living in the Birgawi Residence in al-Azhar,” and he applied himself to some papers on his desk with a resolute movement that indicated he would not open his mouth again. I bowed my head in thanks, apologized several times for disturbing him, and left the office, my head so buzzing with embarrassment that I was oblivious to all sounds around me. I went to the Birgawi Residence, which was situated in a thickly populated quarter. | found that time had so eaten at the building that nothing was left of it save an antiquated facade and a courtyard that, despite being supposedly in the charge of a caretaker, was being used as a rubbish dump. A small, insignificant fellow, a mere prologue to a man, was using the covered entrance as a place for the sale of old books on theology and mysticism. When I asked him about Zaabalawi, he peered at me through narrow, inflamed eyes and said in amazement, “Zaabalawi! Good heavens, what a time ago that was!

Certainly he used to live in this house when it was habitable. Many were the times he would sit with me talking of bygone days, and I would be blessed by his holy presence. Where, though, is Zaabalawi today?” He shrugged his shoulders sorrowfully and soon left me, to attend to an approaching customer. I proceeded to make inquiries of many shopkeepers in the district. While I found that a large number of them had never even heard of Zaabalawi, some, though recalling nostalgically the pleasant times they had spent with him, were ignorant of his present whereabouts, while others openly made fun of him,

labeled him a charlatan, and advised me to put myself in the hands of a doctor—as though I had not already done so. I therefore had no alternative but to return disconsolately home. With the passing of days like motes in the air, my pains grew so severe that I was sure I would not be able to hold out much longer. Once again I fell to wondering about Zaabalawi and clutching at the hope his venerable name stirred within me. Then it occurred to me to seek the help of the local sheikh of the district; in fact, I was sur-

prised I had not thought of this to begin with. His office was in the nature of a small shop, except that it contained a desk and a telephone, and I found him sitting at his desk, wearing a jacket over his striped galabeya.’ As he did not interrupt his conversation with a man sitting beside him, I stood waiting till the man had gone. The sheikh then looked up at me coldly. I told myself that | should win him over by the usual methods, and it was not long before I had him cheerfully inviting me to sit down. “Pm in need of Sheikh Zaabalawi, I answered his inquiry as to the purpose of my Visit. He gazed at me with the same astonishment as that shown by those I had previFe: Pena ously encountered. alive. is stillae “At least,” he said, giving me a smile that revealed his: gold teeth, “he [ns him as_ into bump well might You abode. fixed no has he The devil of it is, though, fruitless nie of here, on the other hand you might spend days and months in searc

> ” Ing.

ee

* galabeya: Traditional Arab robe.

1573

1574

NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

“Even you can’t find him!” “Even I! He’s a baffling man, but I thank the Lord that he’s still alive!”

He gazed at me intently, and murmured, “It seems your condition is serious.” “Very.” “May God come to your aid! But why don’t you go about it systematically?” He spread out a sheet of paper on the desk and drew on it with unexpected speed and skill until he had made a full plan of the district, showing all the various quarters, lanes, alleyways, and squares. He looked at it admiringly and said, “These are dwelling-houses, here is the Quarter of the Perfumers, here the Quarter of the Coppersmiths, the Mouski,” the police and fire stations. The drawing is your best guide. Look carefully in the cafés, the places where the dervishes perform their rites, the mosques

and prayer-rooms, and the Green Gate,’ for he may

well be concealed

among the beggars and be indistinguishable from them. Actually, I myself haven’t seen him for years, having been somewhat preoccupied with the cares of the world, and was only brought back by your inquiry to those most exquisite times of my youth.” I gazed at the map in bewilderment. The telephone rang, and he took up the receiver. “Take it,’ he told me, generously. “We’re at your service.” Folding up the map, I left and wandered off through the quarter, from square to street to alleyway, making inquiries of everyone I felt was familiar with the place. At last the owner of a small establishment for ironing clothes told me, “Go to the calligrapher Hassanein in Umm al-Ghulam—they were friends.” I went to Umm al-Ghulam,’ where I found old Hassanein working in a deep, narrow shop full of signboards and jars of color. A strange smell, a mixture of glue and perfume, permeated its every corner. Old Hassanein was squatting on a sheepskin rug in front of a board propped against the wall; in the middle of it he had inscribed the word “Allah”® in silver lettering. He was engrossed in embellishing the letters with prodigious care. I stood behind him, fearful of disturbing him or breaking the inspiration that flowed to his masterly hand. When my concern at not interrupting him had lasted some time, he suddenly inquired with unaffected gentleness, “Yes?” Realizing that he was aware of my presence, I introduced myself. “ve been told that Sheikh Zaabalawi is your friend; I’m looking for him,’ I said. His hand came to a stop. He scrutinized me in astonishment. “Zaabalawi! God be praised!” he said with a sigh. “He is a friend of yours, isn’t he?” I asked eagerly.

*the Mouski: A central market bazaar. °the Green Gate: Medieval gate in Cairo. 7Umm al-Ghulam: Street in Cairo. “Allah”: “God” in Arabic.

Zaabalawi

power-cut.

“He was so constantly with me,” said the man, “that I felt him to be a part of

everything I drew. But where is he today?” “Perhaps he is still alive?” “He’s alive, without a doubt. . .. He had impeccable taste, and it was due to him that I made my most beautiful drawings.” “God knows,” I said, in a voice almost stifled by the dead ashes of hope, “how dire my need for him is, and no one knows better than you of the ailments in respect of which he is sought.” “Yes, yes. May God restore you to health. He is, in truth, as is said of him, a man, wssacrvtl al go.benien hwo aid ith : and more... .” Smiling broadly, he added, “And his face possesses an unforgettable beauty. But where is he?” Reluctantly I rose to my feet, shook hands, and left. I continued wandering eastward and westward through the quarter, inquiring about Zaabalawi from everyone who, by reason of age or experience, I felt might be likely to help me. Eventually I was informed by a vendor of lupine’ that he had met him a short while ago at the house of Sheikh Gad, the well-known composer. I went to the musician’s house in Tabak-

shiyya,"” where I found him in a room tastefully furnished in the old style, its walls redolent with history. He was seated on a divan, his famous lute beside him, conceal-

ing within itself the most beautiful melodies of our age, while somewhere from within the house came the sound of pestle and mortar and the clamor of children. I immediately greeted him and introduced myself, and was put at my ease by the unaffected way in which he received me. He did not ask, either in words or gesture, what had brought me, and I did not feel that he even harbored any such curiosity. Amazed

at his understanding and kindness, which boded well, I said, “O Sheikh

Gad, I am an admirer of yours, having long been enchanted by the renderings of your songs.” “Thank you,” he said with a smile.

“Please excuse my disturbing you,” I continued timidly, “but I was told that Zaabalawi was your friend, and I am in urgent need of him.”

“Zaabalawi!” he said, frowning in concentration. “You need him? God be with

you, for who knows, O Zaabalawi, where you are.” “Doesn't he visit you?” I asked eagerly. “He visited me some time ago. He might well come right now; on the other hand I mightn’t see him till death!” I gave an audible sigh and asked, “What made him like that?”

*lupine: Beans.

there. '? Tabakshiyya: District in Cairo named for the straw trays that are made and sold

1575

1576

NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

The musician took up his lute. “Such are saints or they would not be saints,” he said, laughing. “Do those who need him suffer as I do?” “Such suffering is part of the cure!” He took up the plectrum and began plucking soft strains from the strings. Lost in thought, I followed his movements. Then, as though addressing myself, I said, “So

my visit has been in vain.” He smiled, laying his cheek against the side of the lute. “God forgive you,” he said, “for saying such a thing of a visit that has caused me to know you and you me!” I was much embarrassed and said apologetically, “Please forgive me; my feelings of defeat made me forget my manners.” “Do not give in to defeat. This extraordinary man brings fatigue to all who seek him. It was easy enough with him in the old days when his place of abode was known. Today, though, the world has changed, and after having enjoyed a position attained only by potentates, he is now pursued bythe police on a charge of false pre-

tenses. It is therefore no longer an easy matter to reach him, but have patience and be sure that you will do so.” He raised his head from the lute and skillfully fingered the opening bars of a melody. Then he sang: I make lavish mention, even though I blame myself, of those I love, For the stories of the beloved are my wine.

With a heart that was weary and listless, I followed the beauty of the melody and the singing. “I composed the music to this poem in a single night,” he told me when he had finished. “I remember that it was the eve of the Lesser Bairam.'* Zaabalawi was my guest for the whole of that night, and the poem was of his choosing. He would sit for a while just where you are, then would get up and play with my children as though he were one of them. Whenever I was overcome by weariness or my inspiration failed me, he would punch me playfully in the chest and joke with me, and I would bubble over with melodies, and thus I continued working till I finished the most beautiful piece I have ever composed.” “Does he know anything about music?”

creativity. ...” “How was itthat he cured those diseases before whichmen are powerless?”

“That is his secret. Maybe you will learn it when you meet him.”

But when would that meeting occur? We relapsed into silence, and the hubbub of children once more filled the room.

"“I make . .. wine”: Lines from a poem by the medieval mystic Ibn al-Farid.

” Lesser Bairam: Holiday celebrated at the end of the month of Ramadan.

Zaabalawi

Again the sheikh began to sing. He went on repeating the words “and I have a memory of her” in different and beautiful variations until the very walls danced in ecstasy. I expressed my wholehearted admiration, and he gave me a smile of thanks. I then got up and asked permission to leave, and he accompanied me to the front door. As I shook him by the hand, he said, “I hear that nowadays he frequents the

house of Hagg Wanas al-Damanhouri. Do you know him?” I shook my head, though a modicum of renewed hope crept into my heart. “He is a man of private means,” the sheikh told me, “who from time to time vis-

its Cairo, putting up at some hotel or other. Every evening, though, he spends at the Negma Bar in Alfi Street.” I waited for nightfall and went to the Negma Bar. I asked a waiter about Hagg Wanas, and he pointed to a corner that was semisecluded because of its position behind a large pillar with mirrors on all four sides. There I saw a man seated alone at a table with two bottles in front of him, one empty, the other two-thirds empty.

There were no snacks or food to be seen, and I was sure that I was in the presence of a hardened drinker. He was wearing a loosely flowing silk galabeya and a carefully

wound turban; his legs were stretched out toward the base of the pillar, and as he gazed into the mirror in rapt contentment, the sides of his face, rounded and hand-

some despite the fact that he was approaching old age, were flushed with wine. I approached quietly till I stood but a few feet away from him. He did not turn toward me or give any indication that he was aware of my presence. “Good evening, Mr. Wanas,’ I greeted him cordially. He turned toward me abruptly, as though my voice had roused him from slumber, and glared at me in disapproval. I was about to explain what had brought me to him when he interrupted in an almost imperative tone of voice that was none the less not devoid of an extraordinary gentleness. “First, please sit down, and, second, please get drunk!” I opened my mouth to make my excuses but, stopping up his ears with his fingers, he said, “Not a word till you do what I say.” I realized I was in the presence of a capricious drunkard and told myself that I should at least humor him a bit. “Would you permit me to ask one question?” I said with a smile, sitting down. Without removing his hands from his ears he indicated the bottle. “When bout like this, I do not allow any conversation between myself eck

and another unless, like me, he is:drunk, otherwise allpropriety islost anddmutual Comprehensionisrendered impossible,’ asign indicating thatIdid not drink. I made “That’s your lookout,” he said offhandedly. “And that’s my condition!” He filled me a glass, which I meekly took and drank. No sooner had the wine grown settled in my stomach than it seemed to ignite. I waited patiently till I had come for me used to its ferocity, and said, “It’s very strong, and I think the time has

ce ; ao to ask you about—” listen to you until shan’t “I ears. his in fingers his put Once again, however, he youre drunk!”

1577

1578

NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

He filled up my glass for the second time. I glanced at it in trepidation; then, overcoming my inherent objection, I drank it down at a gulp. No sooner had the wine come to rest inside me than I lost all willpower. With the third glass, I lost my memory, and with the fourth the future vanished. The world turned round about

me and I forgot why I had gone there. The man leaned toward me attentively, but I saw him— saw everything —as a mere meaningless series of colored planes. I don’t know how long it was before my head sank down onto the arm of the chair and I plunged into deep sleep. During it, I had a beautiful dream the like of which I had never experienced. I dreamed that I was in an immense garden surrounded on all sides by luxuriant trees, and the sky was nothing but stars seen between the entwined branches, all enfolded in an atmosphere like that of sunset or a sky overcast with cloud. I was lying on a small hummock of jasmine petals, more of which fell upon me like rain, while the lucent spray of a fountain unceasingly sprinkled the crown of my-head-and my temples. I was in a state of deep contentedness, of ecstatic serenity. An orchestra of warbling and cooing played in my ear. There was an extraordinary sense of harmony between me and my inner self, and between the two of us and the world, everything being in its rightful place, without discord or distortion. In the whole world there was no single reason for speech or movement, for the universe moved in a rapture of ecstasy. This lasted but a short while. When I opened my eyes, consciousness struck at me like a policeman’s fist and I saw Wanas alDamanhouri regarding me with concern. Only a few drowsy customers were left in the bar. “You have slept deeply,” said my companion. “You were obviously hungry for sleep.” I rested my heavy head in the palms of my hands. When I took them away in astonishment and looked down at them, I found that they glistened with drops of water.

“My head’s wet,” I protested. “Yes, my friend tried to rouse you,” he answered quietly. “Somebody saw me in this state?” “Don’t worry, he is a good man. Have you not heard of Sheikh Zaabalawi?” “Zaabalawi!” I exclaimed, j jumping to my feet. “Yes,” he answered in surprise. “What’s wrong?” “Where is he?” “I don’t know where he is now. He was here and then he left.” I was about to run off in pursuit but found I was more exhausted than I had imagined. Collapsed over the table, I cried out in despair, “My sole reason for coming to you was to meet him! Help me to catch up with him or send someone after him.” The man called a vendor of prawns and asked him to seek out the sheikh and

bring him back. Then he turned to me. “I didn’t realize you were afflicted. I’m very SOE yee.

“You wouldn't let me speak,” I said irritably. “What a pity! He was sitting on this chair beside you the whole time. He was playing with a string of jasmine petals he had around his neck, a gift from one of his

Zaabalawi

admirers, then, taking pity on you, he began to sprinkle some water on your head to bring you around.” “Does he meet you here every night?” I asked, my eyes not leaving the doorway through which the vendor of prawns had left. “He was with me tonight, last night, and the night before that, but before that I

hadn't seen him for a month.” “Perhaps he will come tomorrow,’ I answered with a sigh. “Perhaps.” “T am willing to give him any money he wants.” Wanas answered sympathetically, “The strange thing is that he is not open to such temptations, yet he will cure you if you meet him.” “Without charge?” The vendor of prawns returned, having failed in his mission. I recovered some of my energy and left the bar, albeit unsteadily. At every street corner I called out “Zaabalawi!” in the vague hope that I would be rewarded with an answering shout. The street boys turned contemptuous eyes on me till I sought refuge in the first available taxi. The following evening I stayed up with Wanas al-Damanhouri till dawn, but the sheikh did not put in an appearance. Wanas informed me that he would be going away to the country and would not be returning to Cairo until he had sold the cotton crop. I must wait, I told myself; 1 must train myself to be patient. Let me content

his affecmyself with having made certain of the existence of Zaabalawi, and even of

ifa tion for me, which encourages me to think that he will be prepared to cure me meeting takes place between us. by Sometimes, however, the long delay wearied me. I would become beset ly. complete mind my from him dismiss to myself despair and would try to persuade myth! ee How many weary people in this ues bine way this in him about Why, then, should I torture myself would again No sooner, however, did my pains force themselves upon me than I to meet enough e fortunat be would I when begin to think about him, asking myself gone to had he told was and Wanas of news any him. The fact that I ceased to have of the matter was that I live abroad did not deflect me from my purpose; the truth had become fully convinced that I had to find Zaabalawi. Yes, I have to find Zaabalawi.

1579

aw

ALBERT CAMUS B. ALGERIA, 1913-1960

Albert Camus, c. 1945

Algerian-born Camus, photographed here at about age thirty-two, died in a car accident in 1960

at the age offortyseven. (Hulton / Archive)

Albert Camus is usually associated with EXxISTENTIALISM, the popular philosophical and literary movement of the mid twentieth century exemplified in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. In a secular world that seemed to run according to natural law rather than God’s will and that resonated with Kafka’s nightmares and T. S. Eliot’s “wasteland,” existentialism focused on the freedom that humans must exercise when making choices, when deciding who they are and how they will act. In Camus’s early writings, such as The Stranger (1942) and The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (1942), the author depicts a world that offers no purpose and little meaning to its inhabitants. Camus, calling this secular reality ABSURD, was quickly identified as the philosopher of the absurd, the outsider, and the gentle hedonist. The two great wars of the first half of the twentieth century, with their massive destruction of human life and social ideals, left many wondering whether there was anything or anyone in which to believe. Camus looked at the postwar era with courage, honesty, and sensitivity. He became the quintessential rebel, starting a peoples’ theater, joining and then rejecting the Communist Party, writing social polemics for newspapers, fighting in the French Underground against the Nazis, and refusing to side with either the French or the Algerians in the Algerian struggle for independence in the 1950s. He denounced tyranny, terrorism, and FASCISM, whether they occurred on the extreme right or the extreme left. And he searched for the basis of meaning and social commitment in a world disillusioned with traditional beliefs, movements, and institutions.

Since his death in 1960, Camus’s popularity has periodically waxed and waned, but his writings have consistently encouraged a serious discussion of social issues and invited readers to commit themselves to bettering the human condition. ahl-BARE kah-MOO

Beginning Life in Poverty.

Albert Camus was born on November 7,

1913, in Mondovi, Algeria, in what was then French North Africa. His father, a transplanted Frenchman, was an illiterate farmer who was killed

at the first Battle of Marne in World War I. His mother, who was originally from Spain, moved her family — Albert and his brother, uncle, and grandmother—to a two-room apartment in Belcourt, a working-class suburb of Algiers, where she worked as a charwoman. Raised by his maternal grandmother who used a whip to discipline him, Camus was permanently affected by the silence in his relationship with his illiterate, deaf mother who rarely spoke. Ordinarily, he would have worked after completing elementary school, but a teacher, Louis Germain, to whom Camus would later dedi-

cate his Nobel Prize speech, recognized his intellectual gifts and arranged for a scholarship to the lycée in the European section of Algiers (now Lycée Albert Camus). As a scholarship student from a poor, working1580

Albert Camus, 1913-1960

class neighborhood, the young Camus met with the prejudice and arrogance of his schoolmates, sons of wealth and privilege whose first allegiance was to Europe rather than to North Africa. These experiences influenced the youthful writings of Camus in 1932 when he took the side of the oppressed, seeking to give voice to the sufferings of those who like his mother were largely silent. His sympathy for the plight of the working class guided his moral and political struggles for the rest of his life. Winning honors both as a young scholar of philosophy and as a passionate goalie for the soccer team at the University of Algiers, Camus’s world collapsed at age seventeen when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis; a year’s convalescence was prescribed. Undoubtedly, his brush with death and subsequent unreliable health had a profound effect on the young man. Left-Wing Politics.

1581

Ria For links to more information

about Camus, see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

Camus married Simone Hie in 1933. Influenced by

the liberal writings of such French writers as André Gide and André Malraux’ and the apparent sympathy Communists showed toward the plight of the Arabs, Camus joined the Algerian Communist Party in 1934

ahn-DRAY ZHEED; ahn-DRAY mahl-ROH

and founded The Labor Theater (Le Thédtre du Travail). While working

at various jobs, Camus directed, wrote, and peoples’ theater, which performed on the docks with the Communist Party in 1937 because of its the Arab cause. His first collection of essays, The

adapted plays for this in Algiers. Camus broke growing hostility toward Wrong and the Right Side

(L’Envers et l’endroit, 1937) reveals his passionate attachment

to the

people and landscapes of North Africa. As an AGNOSTIC, he characterizes the twin poles of his secular religion in these essays as Yes and No: a passionate Yes to “life with its face of tears and sun, life in the salt sea and on warm stones,” but a resounding No to injustice and oppression. In “Return to Tipasa” he writes, “Yes, there is beauty and there are the humiliated. Whatever may be the difficulties of the undertaking, I should like never to be unfaithful either to one or to the others.” In 1938 he joined

the staff of a left-wing newspaper, Alger-Républicain, for which he wrote book reviews and a series of articles critical of the government's treatment of the Kabyles, a mountain people south of Algiers. He was eventuhe ally forced out of Algeria because of his politics. Living in Paris, worked for Paris-Soir and continued to write.

ambiPursuing the Absurd. _It was at this time that Camus devised an thinker: and writer a as tious plan that reflected his extraordinary gifts one He would write a philosophical essay, a novel, and a play around For . together works three all publish possible if particular theme and Mythe (Le Sisyphus of Myth The absurd. the chose he theme his first

absurdity arises de Sisyphe, 1942), a collection of essays, explains how

nce of poems, plays, and novels that focused on the importa 1Gide . . . Malraux: André Gide (1869-1951) wrote ual intellect French a was Camus, Malraux (1901-1976), like self-examination and the life of the senses. André the Shanghai about is (1934), Fate Man’s novel, famous most who combined writing with political action; his

in China. uprising and the Communist encroachment

1582

ALBERT CAMUS

from one’s longing for clear answers about the nature of reality in an irrational, incomprehensible world— absurdity exists in the gulf between human need and the “unreasonable silence of the world.” The Stranger ng pre— novel, (L’Etranger, 1942), Camus’s most famous —and disturbi

mur-SOH

sents an absurd hero, Meursault, who refuses to adopt the social and religious conventions of his day and is therefore a stranger to his society. The play Caligula (1945) takes the idea of liberty to destructive extremes and completes the triumvirate on the absurd. World War II interfered with Camus’s plans for developing a second theme. He joined the French resistance movement in 1942, and in 1943,

... there is a passion of the absurd. The

after another attack of tuberculosis, became a publisher’s reader and a member of the administrative staff at Gallimard, a position he held until he died. The next year he became editor of the underground newspaper Combat, writing editorials and articles. In most of his writing of this period, and as a consequence of his associations with French existentialism and Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus examines the grounds for moral responsibility in a world in which God and religious institutions no longer provide a comprehensive vision and an imperative for ethical action. In a secular world, what connects us to the plight of our neighbors and thrusts us into the social arena? Several of Camus’s plays depict life in a world in which restraints have been lifted and anything is possible: The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu, 1944), The State of Siege (LEtat de siége, 1948), and The Just Assassins (Les Justes, 1948).

absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, with-

out relinquishing any of his certainty, with-

out a future, without hope, without illu-

Revolution and Morality. In 1947 Camus published The Plague (La Peste), a novel that sets up a situation in which he can test his ideas: He

gradually reveals the ethical motivations and psychological needs of the book’s characters in a North African city besieged and isolated by the plague. The Rebel (L Homme révolté, 1951), written as a complement to The Plague, discusses the nature of revolution and the relation of means

resignation either.

and ends in political movements. Camus asks if the sacrifices demanded by the new secular prophets like Marx and Lenin’ will lead ultimately to

He stares at death

better societies. These works were attacked by Sartre and others. In 1952,

sion, and without

with passionate

attention and this fascination liberates

him. He experiences the “divine irrespon-

Camus broke with Sartre over a fundamental issue: The latter accepted the evils of Stalinism’ as a means to an end—a more humane society. Camus refused to exchange present sufferings for abstract promises of a better future, regardless of whether those promises were made by a socialist philosopher or a religious prophet. Camus’s final novel, The Fall (La Chute, 1956), is a strange, ironic

sibility” of the con-

monologue about personal responsibility and the darkness surround-

demned man. — JEAN-Paut SARTRE,

ing human motivation. His last volume of short stories, Exile and the Kingdom (L’Exil et le royaume, 1957), captures the poignant loneliness of

1955

being caught between two cultures: of being born in North Africa and yet

? Marx and Lenin: Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a social philosopher and founder of modern socialism. Nikolai Lenin (1870-1924) led the Communist Revolution of 1917 in Russia.

*Stalinism: A form of Marxism associated with Josef Stalin (1879-1953), the Communist dictator of the Soviet

Union from 1922 to 1953. Stalin harshly repressed all dissent and upheld the absolute central authority of his

government. Millions died under his brutal orchestration of the USSR’s industrialization.

Albert Camus, 1913-1960

feeling like a colonial and an exile, all the while searching for a home, a “kingdom.” This colonial dilemma was repeated for Europeans throughout Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, but for Camus it represented a universal condition: To have been born anywhere with full consciousness was to be an exile, estranged in one’s own country or kingdom. Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, one of

the youngest persons to be awarded that honor. Tragically, he died in a car crash en route to Paris on January 4, 1960 —a rather absurd conclusion

to a tremendously productive and worthwhile life.

“The Guest.” The Algerian struggle for independence from France in the 1950s amply illustrated the complexity of revolutionary situations. Recognizing the deep loyalties that both the Algerian-born French and Arab Algerians had toward their homeland, Camus risked the criticism of leftists and sought a reconciliation between the French government and the Algerian rebels, the FLN. This struggle, which polarized attitudes and forced an unwanted partisanship on both the Algerian Arabs and the Algerian French, serves as the volatile setting for Camus’s “The Guest,” taken from his collection Exile and the Kingdom. In this story, colonialism has reached into the Algerian backcountry, but Camus creates a situation in which the ideal of individual freedom takes precedence over political ideology and local politics. Even though French domination is symbolized in the local schoolteacher Daru, who distributes food to his droughtstricken region and teaches French geography to his pupils, the remote desert setting of the story provides an open arena for individual choices— Daru is free to act.

Real class differences are first introduced by showing Balducci, the

gendarme, riding on his horse while the Arab prisoner, with hands bound, is walking. When Daru is given custody of the prisoner, he seeks ways to give the Arab his freedom. Through small signs of decency, Daru affirms the prisoner’s common humanity and at the same time preserves his own set of values. Although there is little real, verbal communication

shared between them, Daru acknowledges the minimal bond of their

meals and lodgings. Daru resents both the legal system that interposed to itself in the Arab’s family quarrel and the subjugated Arab who failed ironically Arab the freedom, his with presented avoid capture. Even when e is incapable of escaping. Furthermore, Daru returns to the schoolhous by tood misunders to find that his efforts on behalf of the Arab are totally who is other Arabs. Like Camus himself, Daru feels the loneliness of one in the reflected situation a kingdom, the in neither an exile nor at home Kingdom. the and Exile collection title “The Myth of Sisyphus.”

In this short philosophical essay, Camus

reinterprets it takes the Greek myth of the condemned Sisyphus and by the gods to ed sentenc was us Sisyph . through the lens of existentialism only to fail hill, a up stone a roll to ting attemp spend eternity in Hades ned condem man of each time. Traditionally understood as the legend as Camus by viewed is us to a fate worse than death, the legend of Sisyph a in Living earth. on being human the a metaphor for the condition of by ed validat ries bounda no rules, al univers no world where there are

1583

Some time ago | summed up The Stranger by a state-

ment which I recognize is highly

paradoxical: “In our

society, any man who does not weep at the funeral of his mother

risks being sentenced

to death.” | only wished to say that the hero of the book was sentenced

because he did not

play the game . . . he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what

is not. It is also, itis above all, to say more than what is, and, in matters of the human heart, to say more than what one

feels. This is what we

do, all of us, every day, to simplify life... . One would not be greatly mis-

taken in reading in

The Stranger the account of aman who, without any heroic posturing, consents to die for

the truth. — ALBERT CAMUS,

preface to the 1955 edition of L’Etranger

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ALBERT CAMUS

transcendent rewards and punishments, Camus uses the word absurd to describe the gap between what humans yearn for and actual reality. We yearn for clarity, for example, but see that the world science has created is incomprehensible. We would like to belong to the world, to feel at home on the earth, and yet, with all our learning, we feel estranged. The unbelievably beautiful cosmos that stretches beyond our vision in the night sky remains cool and indifferent; nothing in nature reaches out to us, nothing takes us in its arms. In this kind of world Camus creates a hero who attends to the business of pushing a rock up a hill without any hope of ultimate redemption. Sisyphus’s heroism in the underworld is exhibited by his courageous attentiveness to his eternal task. There is no god to pat Sisyphus on the back and tell him his struggle was worth it, that it all fit into an eternal plan. @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Biography

Bronner, St. E. Albert Camus, the Thinker, the Artist, the Man. 1996.

Lottman, Herbert. Albert Camus: A Biography. 1980. History and Culture Brée, Germaine. Albert Camus. 1961.

McBride, Joseph. Albert Camus, Philosopher and Litterateur. 1992. Criticism

Bosman, Catherine S. Albert Camus. 200). Brée, Germaine. Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays. 1961. Douglas, Kenneth, ed. Yale French Studies: Albert Camus. 1960.

Eastman, Jennifer. Albert Camus: The Mythic and the Real. 2001. Ellison, David R. Understanding Albert Camus. 1990.

Rizzuto, Anthony. Camus: Love and Sexuality. 1998. Thody, Philip. Albert Camus: A Study of His Work. 1957. B PRONUNCIATION

Albert Camus: ahl-BARE kah-MOO André Gide: ahn-DRAY ZHEED André Malraux: ahn-DRAY mahl-ROH Meursault: mur-SOH

Ow

The Guest Translated by Justin O’Brien

The schoolmaster was watching the two men climb toward him. One was on horseback, the other on foot. They had not yet tackled the abrupt rise leading to the schoolhouse built on the hillside. They were toiling onward, making slow progress in the snow, among the stones, on the vast expanse of the high, deserted plateau. From time to time the horse stumbled. Without hearing anything yet, he could see the

breath issuing from the horse’s nostrils. One of the men, at least, knew the region.

The Guest

They were following the trail although it had disappeared days ago under a layer of dirty white snow. The schoolmaster calculated that it would take them half an hour to get onto the hill. It was cold; he went back into the school to get a sweater. He crossed the empty, frigid classroom. On the blackboard the four rivers of France,’ drawn with four different colored chalks, had been flowing toward their estuaries for the past three days. Snow had suddenly fallen in mid-October after eight months of drought without the transition of rain, and the twenty pupils, more or less, who lived in the villages scattered over the plateau had stopped coming. With fair weather they would return. Daru now heated only the single room that was his lodging, adjoining the classroom and giving also onto the plateau to the east. Like the class windows, his window looked to the south too. On that side the school was a

few kilometers from the point where the plateau began to slope toward the south, In clear weather could be seen the purple mass of the mountain range where the gap

opened onto the desert. ~

Somewhat warmed, Daru returned to the window from which he had first seen the two men. They were no longer visible. Hence they must have tackled the rise. The sky was not so dark, for the snow had stopped falling during the night. The morning had opened with a dirty light which had scarcely become brighter as the ceiling of clouds lifted. At two in the afternoon it seemed as if the day were merely beginning. But still this was better than those three days when the thick snow was falling amidst unbroken darkness with little gusts of wind that rattled the double door of the classroom. Then Daru had spent long hours in his room, leaving it only to go to the shed and feed the chickens or get some coal. Fortunately the delivery truck from Tadjid, the nearest village to the north, had brought his supplies two days before the bliz-

sunlight, the to forget that poverty, that army of ragged ghosts wandering in the bylittle, little up plateaus burned to a cinder month after month, the earth-shriveled

ne’s sheep had foot. ‘The Terally-scorched, every stone bursting into dust-under-o any-

here and there, sometimes without died then by thousands and even a few men,| cj ol “one’s knowing. ~~

such poverty, he who lived almost like a monk in his remote_ st with contra In

had and with the rough life, had _ tle schoolhouse, nonetheless satisfied with ‘thelithe ted shelves, lord with his whitewashed walls, hisnarrow couch, his unpain

felt like a

ly this ‘snow, , his weekly provision of water and food. And sudden his welland ——

Gironde rivers; French geography is being taught rather 1 four rivers of France: The Seine, Loire, Rhéne, and than Algerian.

1585

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ALBERT CAMUS

without warning, without the foretaste of rain. This is the way the region was, cruel to live in, even without men—who didn’t help matters either. But Daru had been

born here. Everywhere else, he felt exiled.

SPT

Pe

He stepped out onto the terrace in front of the schoolhouse. The two men were now halfway up the slope. He recognized the horseman as Balducci, the old gendarme he had known for a long time. Balducci was holding onthe end of a rope an Arab who was walking behind him with hands bound and hea owered. The gen-

‘darme waved a greeting to which Daru did not reply, lost ashe was in contemplation of the Arab dressed in a faded blue jellaba,” his feet in sandals but covered with socks

of heavy raw wool, his head surmounted by a narrow, short chéche.* They were approaching. Balducci was holding back his horse in order not to hurt the Arab, and the group was advancing slowly. Within earshot, Balducci shouted: “One hour to do the three kilometers from El Ameur!” Daru did not answer. Short and square in his thick sweater, he watched them climb. Not once had the Arab raised his head. “Hello,” said Daru when they

got up onto the terrace. “Come in and warm up.” Balducci painfully got down from his horse without letting go the rope. From under his bristling mustache he smiled at the schoolmaster. His little dark eyes, deep-set under a tanned forehead, and his mouth surrounded with wrinkles made him look attentive and studious. Daru took the bridle, led the horse to the shed, and came back to the two

men, who were now waiting for him in the school. He led them into his room. “I am going to heat up the classroom,” he said. “We'll be more comfortable there.” When he entered the room again, Balducci was on the couch. He had undone the rope tying him to the Arab, who had squatted near the stove. His hands still bound, the chéche pushed back on his head, he was looking toward the window. At first Daru noticed only his huge lips, fat, smooth, almost Negroid; yet his nose was straight, his eyes were dark and full of fever. The chéche revealed an obstinate forehead and, under the weathered skin now rather discolored by the cold, the whole face had a

restless and rebellious look that struck Daru when the Arab, turning his face toward him, looked him straight in the eyes. “Go into the other room,” said the schoolmaster, “and I’ll make you some mint tea.” “Thanks,” Balducci said. “What a chore! How I

long for retirement.” And addressing his prisoner in Arabic: “Come on, you.” The Arab got up and, slowly, holding his bound wrists in front of him, went into the classroom. With the tea, Daru brought a chair. But Balducci was already enthroned on the nearest pupil’s desk and the Arab had squatted against the teacher’s platform facing the stove, which stood between the desk and the window. When he held out the glass

of tea to the prisoner, Daru hesitated at the sight of his bound hands. “He might perhaps be untied.” “Sure,” said Balducci. “That was for the trip.” He started to get to his feet. But Daru, setting the glass on the floor, had knelt beside the Arab. Without

Ae j : ; jellaba: “Djellaba”: a long, loose robe worn by men and women in some Arab countries. 3 chéche: A head scarf or turban.

The Guest

saying anything, the Arab watched him with his feverish eyes. Once his hands were free, he rubbed his swollen wrists against each other, took the glass of tea, and sucked up the burning liquid in swift little sips. “Good, said Daru. “And where are you headed?” Balducci withdrew his mustache from the tea. “Here, son.” “Odd pupils! And youre spending the night?” “No. ’'m going back to El Ameur. And you will deliver this fellow to Tinguit. He is expected at police headquarters.” Balducci was looking at Daru with a friendly little smile. “What’s this story?” asked the schoolmaster. “Are you pulling my leg?” “No, son. Those are the orders.” “The orders? I’m not .. ” Daru hesitated, not wanting to hurt the old Corsican. “T mean, that’s not my job.”

“What! What’s the meaning of that? In wartime people do all kinds of jobs.” “Then I'll wait for the declaration of war!” Balducci nodded. “OK. But the orders exist and they concern you too. Things are brewing, it appears. There is talk of a forthcoming revolt. We are mobilized, in a way.’ Daru still had his obstinate look. “Listen, son,” Balducci said. “I like you and you must understand. There’s only a E Ameur to patrol throughout the whole territory of a small departdozen of us at El and ment! and I must get back in a hurry. I was told to hand this guy over to you stir; to g beginnin was village His there. kept be couldn't He return without delay. w before the they wanted to take him back. You must take him to Tinguit tomorro After that, all day is over. Twenty kilometers shouldn't faze a husky fellow like you. life.” will be over. Youll come back to your pupils and your comfortable the earth. Daru pawing and g snortin heard be could horse Behind the wall the g and the light was was looking out the window. Decidedly, the weather was clearin melted, the sun would increasing over the snowy plateau. When all the snow was For days, still, the take over again and once more would burn the fields of stone. where nothing had unchanging sky would shed its dry light on the solitary expanse any connection with man. ci, “what did he do?” And, “After all” he said, turning around toward Balduc

“Does he speak French?” before the gendarme had opened his mouth, he asked: , but they were hiding “No, not a word. We had been looking for him for a month him. He killed his cousin.”

t “Ts heagainsus?”

“t don’t think so. But you can never be sure.” “Why did he kill?” grain, it seems. It’s not at all “A family squabble, I think. One owed the other

billhook. You know, like a sheep, kreezk!” clear. In short, hekilled hiscousin witha

4 department: A territorial unit.

1587

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ALBERT CAMUS

Balducci made the gesture of drawing a blade across his throat and the Arab, his attention attracted, watched him with a sort of anxiety. Daru felt a sudden wrath against the man, against all men with their rotten spite, their tireless hates, their

blood lust. But the kettle was singing on the stove. He served Balducci more tea, hesitated, then served the Arab again, who, a second time, drank avidly. His raised arms made

the jellaba fall open and the schoolmaster saw his thin, muscular chest. “Thanks, kid, Balducci said. “And now, I’m off.”

He got up and went toward the Arab, taking a small rope from his pocket. “What are you doing?” Daru asked dryly. Balducci, disconcerted, showed him the rope. “Don't bother.” The old gendarme hesitated. “It’s up to you. Of course, you are armed?” “T have my shotgun.” “Where?” “Tn the trunk.” “You ought to have it near your bed.” “Why? I have nothing to fear.” “Youre crazy, son. If there’s an uprising, no one is safe, we're all in the same boat.” “Pll defend myself. I'll have time to see them coming.” Balducci began to laugh, then suddenly the mustache covered the white teeth. “Youll have time? O.K. That’s just what I was saying. You have always been a little cracked. That’s why I like you, my son was like that.” ve. At the same time he took out his revolver and put it on the desk. Sr “Keep it; I don’t need two weapons from here to El Ameur.” qo The revolver shone against the black paint of the table. When the gendarme turned toward him, the schoolmaster caught the smell of leather and cea

“Listen, Balducci,’ Daru said suddenly, “every bit of this disgusts me, and first of all your fellow here. But Iwon’t hand him over. Fight, yes, if I have to. But not that.” The old gendarme stood in front of him and looked at him severely. “You're being a fool,” he said slowly. “I don’t like it either. You don't get used to putting a rope on a man even afteryears of it, and you're even ashamed —yes,

ashamed. But you can’t letthemhave their way.”zed by:

hinprian ait S1Gt

~~“T won'tt hand him over,” Daru said again.

“T’s an order, son, and 1repeat it.” “That’s right. Repeat to them what I’ve said to you: I won't hand him over.”

Balducci made a visible effort to reflect. He looked at the Arab and at Daru. At last he decided. “No, I won't tell them anything. If you want to drop us, go ahead; I'll not denounce you. I have an order to deliver the prisoner and I’m doing so. And now youll just sign this paper for me.” “Don't be mean with me. I know you'll tell the truth. Youre from hereabouts and you are a man. But you must sign, that’s the rule.”

The Guest

Daru opened his drawer, took out a little square bottle of purple ink, the red wooden penholder with the “sergeant-major” pen he used for making models of penmanship, and signed. The gendarme carefully folded the paper and put it into his wallet. Then he moved toward the door. “TIl see you off,’ Daru said. “No,” said Balducci. “There’s no use being polite. You insulted me.”

He looked at the Arab, motionless in the same spot, sniffed peevishly, and turned away toward the door. “Good-by, son,” he said. The door shut behind him. Balducci appeared suddenly outside the window and then disappeared. His footsteps were muffled by the snow. The horse stirred on the other side of the wall and several chickens fluttered in fright. A moment later Balducci reappeared outside the window leading the horse by the bridle. He walked toward the little rise without turning around and disappeared from sight with the horse following him. A big stone could be heard bouncing down. Daru walked back toward the prisoner, who, without stirring, never took his eyes off him. “Wait,” the schoolmaster said in Arabic and went toward the bedroom. As he was going through the door, he had a second thought, went to the desk, took the revolver, and stuck it in his pocket. Then, without looking back, he went into his room. For some time he lay on his couch watching the sky gradually close over, listening to the silence. It was this silence that had seemed painful to him during the first days here, after the war. He had requested a post in the little town at the base of the foothills separating the upper plateaus from the desert. There, rocky walls, green and black to the north, pink and lavender to the south, marked the frontier of eternal the summer. He had been named to a post farther north, on the plateau itself. In ds — beginning, the solitude and the silence had been hard for him on these wastelan } had they peopled only by stones. Occasionally, furrows suggested cultivation, but plowing only been dug to uncover a certain kind of stone good for building. The the hollows in ated accumul soil of layer thin a e Elsewher rocks. here was to harvest was: Bare | it way the is This gardens. village paltry enrich to would be scraped out disapthen hed, rock covered three quarters of the region. Towns sprang up; flouris then died. No one in this peared; men came by, loved one another or fought bitterly, outside this desert neither of desert, neither he nor his guest, mattered. And yet, them, Daru knew, could have really lived.

was amazed at the When he got up, no noise came from the classroom. He Arab might have fled and unmixed joy he derived from the mere thought that the the prisoner was there. He that he would be alone with no decision to make. But With eyes open, he was had merely stretched out between the stove and the desk. particularly noticeable, givstaring at the ceiling. In that position, his thick lips were Arab got up and followed him. In ing him a pouting look. “Come,” said Daru. The near the table under the window. the bedroom, the schoolmaster pointed to a chair Daru. The Arab sat down without taking his eyes off “Are you hungry?” “Yes,” the prisoner said. oil, shaped a cake in a fryingDaru set the table for two. He took flour and

bottled gas. While the cake was pan, and lighted the little stove that functioned on

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ALBERT

CAMUS

cooking, he went out to the shed to get cheese, eggs, dates, and condensed milk. When the cake was done he set it on the window sill to cool, heated some condensed milk diluted with water, and beat up the eggs into an omelette. In one of his motions he knocked against the revolver stuck in his right pocket. He set the bowl down, went into the classroom, and put the revolver in his desk drawer. When he came back to the room, night was falling. He put on the light and served the Arab. “Eat,” he said. The Arab took a piece of the cake, lifted it eagerly to his mouth, and stopped short. “And you?” he asked. “After you. I'll eat too.” The thick lips opened slightly. The Arab hesitated, then bit into the cake determinedly. The meal over, the Arab looked at the schoolmaster. “Are you the judge?” “No, Pm simply keeping you until tomorrow.” “Why do you eat with me?” “Tm hungry.” The Arab fell silent. Daru got up and went out. He brought back a folding bed from the shed, set it up between the table and the stove, perpendicular to his own bed. From a large suitcase which, upright in a corner, served as a shelf for papers, he took two blankets and arranged them on the camp bed. Then he stopped, felt useless, and sat down on his bed. There was nothing more to do or to get ready. He had to look at this man. He looked at him, therefore, trying to imagine his face bursting

with rage. He couldn't do so. He could see nothing but the dark yet shining eyes and the Lee mouth. $$ _ “Why did you kill him?” he asked in a voice whose hostile tone surprised him. The Arab looked away. “He ran away. I ran after him.” He raised his eyes to Daru again and they were full of a sort of woeful interrogation. “Now what will they do to me?” “Are you afraid?” He stiffened, turning his eyes away. “Are you sorry?” The Arab stared at him =e, a Obviously he did not understand. Daru’s annoyance was growing. At the same time he felt awkward and self-conscious with his big body wedged between the two beds. “Lie down there,” he said impatiently. “That’s your bed.” The Arab didn’t move. He called to Daru: “Tell me!” The schoolmaster looked at him. “Is the gendarme coming back tomorrow?” “T don’t know.” “Are you coming with us?” “T don’t know. Why?” The prisoner got up and stretched out on top of the blankets, his feet toward the window. The light from the electric bulb shone straight into his eyes and he closed them at once.

1591

The Guest

“Why?” Daru repeated, standing beside the bed. The Arab opened his eyes under the blinding light and looked at him, trying not

to blink” ~

“Come ere with us,” he said. eS =

Ea

In the middle of the night, Daru was still not asleep. He had gone to bed after undressing completely; he generally slept naked. But when he suddenly realized that he had nothing on, he hesitated. He felt vulnerable and the temptation came to him to put his clothes back on. Then he shrugged his shoulders; after all, he wasn’t a child and, if need be, he could break his adversary in two. From his bed he could observe him, lying on his back, still motionless with his eyes closed under the harsh light. When Daru turned out the light, the darkness seemed to coagulate all of a sudden. Little by little, the night came back to life in the window where the starless sky was stirring gently. The schoolmaster soon made out the body lying at his feet. The Arab still did not move, but his eyes seemed open. A faint wind was prowling around the schoolhouse. Perhaps it would drive away the clouds and the sun would

reappear.

During the night the wind increased. The hens fluttered a little and then were

silent. The Arab turned over on his side with his back to Daru, who thought he heard

him moan. Then he listened for his guest’s breathing, become heavier and more regular. He listened to that breath so close to him and mused without being able to go to bothsleep. In this room where he had been sleeping alone for a year, this presence he ered him. But it bothered him also by imposing on him a sort of brotherhood the share knew well but refused to accept in the present circumstances. Men who having cast off same rooms, soldiers or prisoners, develop a strange alliance as if, above their their armor with their clothing, they fraternized every evening, over and himshook Daru differences, in the ancient community of dream and fatigue. But self; he didn’t like such musings, and it was essential to sleep.

aster was still A little later, however, when the Arab stirred slightly, the schoolm the alert. The on d, not asleep. When the prisoner made a second move, he stiffene a sleepwalker. of motion Arab was lifting himself slowly on his arms with almost the toward Daru, head his Seated upright in bed, he waited motionless without turning d just occurre to him that as if he were listening attentively. Daru did not stir; it had to act at once. Yet he conthe revolver was still in the drawer of his desk. It was better y motion, put his feet on tinued to observe the prisoner, who, with the same slither Daru was about to call out the ground, waited again, then began to stand up slowly. l but extraordinarily silent to him when the Arab began to walk, in a quite natura room that opened into the way. He was heading toward the door at the end of the out, pushing the door behind him shed. He lifted the latch with precaution and went is running away,’ he merely but without shutting it. Daru had not stirred. “He The hens were not fluttering; thought. “Good riddance!” Yet he listened attentively. idn t him, of water reached the guest must be on the plateau. A faint sound

| \

|

|

>

4

know

what it was until the

Arab

again stood

Irame

i

Closed

the

door

m Lhen art without a sound. bed ck carefully, and came bato e ee ea s of his ECP So feltasleep-Still later he seemed, from the depth and

|

1592

ALBERT CAMUS

around the schoolhouse. “I’m dreaming! I’m dreaming!” he repeated to himself. And he went on sleeping. When he awoke, the sky was clear; the loose window let in a cold, pure air. The Arab was asleep, hunched up under the blankets now, his mouth open, utterly relaxed. But when Daru shook him, he started dreadfully, staring at Daru with wild eyesas if he had never seen him and such a frightened _expresst e schoolmaster stepped back. “Don't be-afraid-Irs me: You-must-eat-Fhe Arab nodded his head and said yes. Calm had returned to his face, but his expression was vacant and listless. The coffee was ready. They drank it seated together on the folding bed as they munched their pieces of the cake. Then Daru led the Arab under the shed and showed him the faucet where he washed. He went back into the room, folded the

blankets and the bed, made his own bed, and put the room in order. Then he went through the classroom and out onto the terrace. The sun was already rising in the blue sky; a soft, bright light was bathing the deserted plateau. On the ridge the snow was melting in spots. The stones were about to reappear. Crouched on the edge of the plateau, the schoolmaster looked at the deserted expanse. He thought of Balducci. He had hurt him, for he had sent him off in a way as if he didn’t want to be associated with him. He could still hear the gendarme’s farewell and, without knowing why, he

felt strangely empty and vulnerable. At that moment, from the other side of the schoolhouse, the prisoner coughed. Daru listened to him almost despite himself and then, furious, threw a pebble that whistled through the air before sinking into the snow. That man’s stupid crime revolted him, but to hand him over was contrary to

honor. Merely thinking of it made him smart with humiliation. And he cursed at ‘one and the same time his own people who had sent him this Arab and the Arab too who had dared to kill and not managed to get away. Daru got up, walked in a circle on the terrace, waited motionless, then went back into the schoolhouse.

The Arab, leaning over the cement floor of the shed, was washing his teeth with two fingers. Daru looked at him and said: “Come.” He went back into the room ahead of the prisoner. He slipped a hunting-jacket on over his sweater and put on walking-shoes. Standing, he waited until the Arab had put on his chéche and sandals. They went into the classroom and the schoolmaster pointed to the exit, saying: “Go ahead.” The fellow didn’t budge. “’’m coming,” said Daru. The Arab went out. Daru went back into the room and made a package of pieces of rusk, dates, and sugar. In the classroom, before going out, he hesitated a second in front of his desk, then crossed the threshold and locked the door. “That’s the way,” he said. He started toward the east, followed by the prisoner. But, a short distance from the schoolhouse, he thought he heard a slight sound behind them. He retraced his steps and examined the surroundings of the house, there was no one there. The Arab watched him without seeming to understand. “Come on,” said Daru.

They walked for an hour and rested beside a sharp peak of limestone. The snow was melting faster and faster and the sun was drinking up the puddles at once, rapidly cleaning the plateau, which gradually dried and vibrated like the air itself. When they resumed walking, the ground rang under their feet. From time to time a bird

The Guest

rent the space in front of them with a joyful cry. Daru breathed in deeply the fresh morning light. He felt a sort of rapture before the vast familiar expanse, now almost entirely yellow under its dome of blue sky. They walked an hour more, descending toward the south. They reached a level height made up of crumbly rocks. From there on, the plateau sloped down, eastward, toward a low plain where there were a few spindly trees and, to the south, toward outcroppings of rock that gave the landscape a chaotic look. Daru surveyed the two directions. There was nothing but the sky on the horizon. Not a man could be seen. He turned toward the Arab, who was looking at him blankly. Daru held out the package to him. “Take it,” he said. “There are dates, bread, and sugar. You can hold out for two days. Here are a thousand francs too.” The Arab took the package and the money but kept his full hands at chest level as if he didn't know what to do with what was being given him. “Now look,” the schoolmaster said

as he pointed in the direction of the east, “there’s the way to Tinguit. You have a twohour walk. At Tinguit you'll find the administration and the police. They are expecting you.” The Arab looked toward the east, still holding the package and the money against his chest. Daru took his elbow and turned him rather roughly toward the south. At the foot of the height on which they stood could be seen a faint path. “That’s the trail across the plateau. In a day’s walk from here you'll find pasturelands law.” The and the first nomads. They'll take you in and shelter you according to their expression. his in visible was Arab had now turned toward Daru and a sort of panic you.” He “Listen? he said. Daru shook his head: “No, be quiet. Now I’m leaving looked school, the of turned his back on him, took two long steps in the direction heard he minutes few a For hesitantly at the motionless Arab, and started off again. head. his turn not did and nothing but his own step resounding on the cold ground of edge the on there still was A moment later, however, he turned around. The Arab felt Daru schoolmaster. the at the hill, his arms hanging now, and he was looking waved vaguely, and something rise in his throat. But he swore with impatience, again stopped and he when started off again. He had already gone some distance looked. There was no longer anyone on the hill. and was beginning to Daru hesitated. The sun was now rather high in the sky

d his steps, at first somewhat uncerbeat down on his head. The schoolmaster retrace little hill, he was bathed in sweat. He tainly, then with decision. When he reached the to

at the top. The rock-fields climbed it as fast as he could and stopped, out of breath, plain to the east a steamy the on the south stood out sharply against the blue sky, but heart, made out the heavy with heat was already rising. And in that slight haze, Daru,

Arab walking slowly on the road to prison. ittle later, standing

lmaster was before the window of the classroom, the schoo

e of the plateau, but he hardly saw watching the clear light bathing the whole surfac winding French rivers, sprawled the it. Behind him on the blackboard, among the handed over our brot el clumsily chalked-up words he had just read: “You the invisible lands u, and, beyond, pay for this.” Daru looked at the sky, the platea ew as

loved so-mavehyh ngto the sea. In this vastlandscape hehad the way chi “stretall

alongs

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ALBERT CAMUS

Qw

The Myth of Sisyphus Translated by Justin O’Brien

The gods had condemned Sisyphus' to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this. Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets. Egina, the daughter of A’sopus, was carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell about it on

condition that Hsopus would give water to the citadel of Corinth. To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water. He was punished for this in the underworld. Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror. It is said also that Sisyphus, being near to death, rashly wanted to test his wife’s love. He ordered her to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square. Sisyphus woke up in the underworld. And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal

darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, led him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him. You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight

‘Sisyphus: In order to spite his brother Salmoneus, Sisyphus seduced Salmoneus’s daughter Tyro and had two children with her; she killed them when she learned the reason for his love. Sisyphus then committed an impious act for which he was condemned to Hades where for eternity he had to push an enormous boulder to the top of a hill. Near the top, the stone was fated to roll down again.

The Myth of Sisyphus

against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earthclotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain. It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock. If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: It is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be

surmounted by scorn. If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, tightly to and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too melanthat happens it memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, rock itself. The boundcholy rises in man’s heart: This is the rock’s victory, this is the

But crushing less grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. fate withobeys outset truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Edipus at the the same at Yet begins. out knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy to the him linking bond moment, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only so “Despite out: rings world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark that conclude me many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make gives the recipe for all is well.” Sophocles’ Cdipus, like Dostoevsky’s Kiriloy,” thus the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism. to write a manual of One does not discover the absurd without being tempted however. Hapworld, one happiness. “What! by such narrow ways— 2” There is but able. It would insepar are piness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They discovery. It absurd the from be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs “T conclude ess. happin from happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limthat all is well,” says Edipus, and that remark has not been, exhausted. It drives out ited universe of man. It teaches that all is not,

by d (1872) who believed that men would become gods 2 Kirilov: A character in Dostoevsky’s novel The Possesse overcoming their fear of death

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of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men. All Sisyphus’s silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

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Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart IMAGE: Yoruba sculpture, 1881

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IMAGE: Nigerian servants transporting a British official,1910

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Images of Africa

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TIME AND PLACE: Twentieth-Century Europe:

The Congress of Black Writers

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CHINUA ACHEBE B. NIGERIA, 1930

A novelist, poet, short-story writer, writer of children’s literature,

essayist, editor, and teacher, Chinua Achebe is one of the most

influential West African writers of the twentieth century. Achebe he has also worked as a radio producer, writer, and director, and

has served on diplomatic missions for Biafra during the Nigerian civil war and was deputy president of the People’s Redemption Party from in 1983. With subtlety and complexity, Achebe’s novels portray especulture, an insider’s point of view traditional African society and of its cially as it clashes with the forces of colonialism and the vestiges Soyinka Wole writers African fellow Like ghost in postcolonial Nigeria. Kenya, (b. 1934) from Nigeria and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (b. 1938) from for vision moral Achebe has articulated in his work a sustaining the difficult African consciousness and identity, engaging directly ing a sense recover and era onial problems Africa faces in the postcol , stories, folktales nal of the African spirit as it emerges from traditio novels capture the and customs. Though Achebe writes in English, his proverbs and tales. rich imagery and rhythms of his native country’s English and Ibo Education.

CHIN-wah ah-CHAY-bay

en-GOO-gee wah thee-ONG-oh

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!

\

Chinua Achebe was born November 16,

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Isaiah Okafor Achebe and 1930, in Ogidi, Nigeria, the fifth child of

raised him in a Janet Iloegbunam, Ibo missionary teachers who his education in English Christian household. Although he received developed an attachment he at the British missionary schools in Ogidi, r and sister. In his teens he to traditional Ibo stories through his mothe hia and then attended studied at the Government College in Umua

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Chinuanenebe (© Ralph Orlowski/ Reuters/CORBIS)

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CHINUA ACHEBE

University College in Ibadan from 1948 to 1953, receiving a bachelor’s

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degree. He had entered college on a scholarship to study medicine, but after his first year he switched to the liberal arts, including English literature. His reading in European, especially British, literature brought home to Achebe the often condescending and false image of Africa presented by European writers such as Joyce Cary (1888-1957) and Joseph Conrad. Achebe began writing his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), as a direct repudiation of the image of Nigeria presented in Cary’s Mister Johnson (1939).

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Civil War and Independence. Upon graduation from the university at Ibadan, Achebe worked as a producer and director for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service until civil war erupted in 1967. Nigeria had gained its independence from Britain in 1960, the year before Achebe’s marriage to Christie Chinwe Okoli. In the vacuum created by the withdrawal of British colonial authority, three tribal groups— the Ibo (or Igbo), Hausa-Fulani, and Yoruba—competed against one another for power. The civil war, which lasted until 1970, did little to

resolve those rivalries, and since the time of the war Nigeria has been ruled by a succession of dictators, some posing as supporters of democracy. During the war, Biafra, a state of Ibo speakers in eastern Nigeria, seceded from the rest of the country. Achebe supported the Biafran independence movement, working for the Biafran Ministry of Information. That experience served him well, especially in A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987), in which he focuses on the

corruption, power-mongering, and hope for democratic freedoms that characterize Nigerian politics even today. A collection of poetry, Christmas in Biafra, winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and a collection of short stories, Girls at War, were written during the civil war.

For links to more information about Chinua

Achebe, a quiz on Things Fall Apart, and information about Achebe’s

twenty-first-century relevance, see bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

International Acclaim. In the early 1970s Achebe accepted visiting professorships at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he again taught from 1987 to 1988, and the University of Connecticut at Storrs. During this time he taught literature and founded and edited Okike, a journal of African literature and criticism. In addition, he

founded the Heinemann African Writers Series, which has established African literature written in English as a major force in contemporary world literature. In 1976 Achebe returned to Nigeria as a teacher and

senior research fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He has continued to be involved in Nigerian political life, primarily as a commentator, and in 1983 he published The Trouble with Nigeria,

a nonfiction critique of the political corruption of his country.

Chinua Achebe, 1930

Representing Africa. Achebe describes himself as a “political writer” whose work is “concerned with universal human communication across racial and cultural boundaries as a means of fostering respect for all people.” He set outto correct the distorted representation of Africa that European writers had delivered to European audiences _and to show the adverse impact that colonization had had upon “indigenous cultures. His first three novels, which make up a kind of trilogy, directly accomplish those objectives. Things Fall Apart (1958), chosen here to represent Achebe, shows Nigeria at the advent of British colonization. It takes place in the Ibo villages of Umuofia in the late 1880s, a time when English missionaries and administrators first began to appear. The Europeans were interested in the Niger delta region for its palm oil, and in 1879 Englishman George Goldie formed the United Africa Company to drive out the French, who had conquered most of western Africa in the previous decade. Eventually becoming the Royal Niger Company and granted a royal charter, Goldie’s company established a monopoly in the region by about 1884. By 1893, Nigeria was declared a British colony, and cocoa, timber, rubber, coconuts, and

palm oil began to flow out of the country on British ships. The novel focuses on the psychological and cultural consequences of that history as it affects the leader Okonkwo, who struggles to preserve his and his people’s integrity and sovereignty in the face of the changes in law and religion that the colonizers have brought. Achebe’s next two novels, No Longer at Ease (1960) No Longer at Ease. the two and Arrow of God (1964), continue the story of Umuofia in

third novel generations after Okonkwo’s. Although Arrow of God is the a in Umuofi in ion generat in the series, it tells the story of the second gap the with the 1920s. Ezeulu, a spiritual leader, also must grapple hero, Ezeulu between European and African ways. Another flawed fails when scheme The schools. plans to use his son to spy on Western his father and his the son, Oduche, is converted and turns against

oned by the father’s god. Ezeulu manages to get arrested, is impris carrying out a heavy British, and finally embitters his own people by him. No Longer at penalty on them; the entire village turns against on of Okonkwo, the Ease takes readers into the 1950s, when a grands

te Ibo tradition with English-educated Obi Okonkwo, fails to integra

nts the educated elite, European ideals. The would-be hero represe

failed to materialize in whose aspirations have more often than not stranger, turns against his Nigeria. Obi returns to his country a kind of he'd hoped to eradicate. people, and falls into the political corruption

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The Igbo have always lived in a world of continual struggle,

motion, and

change —a

feature

conspicuous in the tautness, overreach, and torsion of their art; itis likea

tightrope walk, a hairbreadth brush

with the boundaries of anarchy. — CHINUA ACHEBE

CHINUA ACHEBE

Anthills of the Savannah. Achebe’s next three novels focus primarily on political corruption in the post-1960 period —after Nigerian independence. A Man of the People (1966) condemns the abuse of power and corruption, as does Anthills of the Savannah (1988). The latter

novel, one of the most highly acclaimed of Achebe’s works, follows a set of friends—Ikem, Sam, and Chris—whose friendship falls apart as Sam, who has become a military dictator of the imaginary West African country of Kangan, loses the support and confidence of Ikem, an editor, and Chris, the Minister of Information. To preserve his power, Sam resorts to propaganda, repression, and finally, the extermination of opponents and critics. As in the case of AMan of the People, which seemed to anticipate much of the corruption of the 19708, Anthills of the Savannah appears to have prophesied the duplicity and arbitrary wielding of power of the present regime in Nigeria. Anthills ends with cautious optimism, noting the important role of women in the movement for reform. With his latest novel pointing to the uncertain future, Achebe’s work so far constitutes a history, in fiction, of colonialism and independence in Nigeria from the nineteenth century to the present.

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Things FallApart. Things Fall Apart, one of the first and finest novels of postindependence African literature in English, launched Achebe on the project of tracing Nigeria’s history in his fiction. The title comes from William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” a visionary poem announcing the birth of a “rough beast . . . slouching toward Bethlehem.” That beast here appears to be the erosion of Ibo society, portrayed in unsurpassed detail, sensitivity, and understanding, after its devastating encounter with European colonialism. Set in roughly the same period as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902), the novel presents the early encounter with European missionaries from the African— specifically, the Ibo — point of view. Some of the incidents of this encounter, such as the raid on Abame mentioned in Chapter 15, are based on actual historical incidents — in this case, a British attack on

the town of Ahiara, which took place in 1905, to avenge the killing of a missionary. Achebe’s critique of British colonialism, however, comes

less through the documentation of such incidents and more through the celebration of Ibo culture. To counteract the portrayal of the African as a shadowy figure in novels such as Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson (1939) and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Achebe in this novel

and others honors, without resorting to sentimentality, the humanity and dignity of the African people. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe

Chinua Achebe, 1930

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Yoruba sculpture, 1881

This carved wood

statue from the Yoruba culture of

Nigeria depicts a European missionary

nun with five African children. (© Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource)

presents that humanity in part through the character of the village aspect leader, Okonkwo, whose actions involve him in almost every

of the complex culture and religious life of the Ibo in Umuofia. Okonkwo is a complex and tragic hero who is as noble and flawed the as an Achilles or a Creon.' While Okonkwo embodies many of success—he virtues of his society— courage, industry, and material sfaction. His self-sati and ness stubborn s also demonstrates a dangerou are presented Nwoye son his killing of Ikemefuna and his rejection of ’s rigidity Okonkwo unsympathetically; indeed, like Creon’s in Antigone, As in later novand heavy-handedness eventually lead to his downfall. in Things Fall els, and like his compatriot writer Wole Soyinka, Achebe, but also tradition of Apart, recognizes the need for the preservation n ideas Europea affirms a cautious and controlled acceptance of those make it stronger. and practices that can enhance African culture and

ee-kay-may-FOO-nah

refuses to es’ (496-406 B.C.E.) play Antigone as a man who 1 Creon: The king of Thebes; represented in Sophocl bend the rules of the state.

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CHINUA ACHEBE

Nigerian servants transporting a British official, 1910

British administrators ruled indirectly in Nigeria, appointing native leaders to collect taxes and carry out other duties on behalf of thegovernment. The various native societies and traditions in Nigeria had mixed reactions to this system, and

the appointed leaders were often met with resistance. (The Art Archive/John Meck)

The English missionaries and administration officials exacerbate the misfortunes visited upon Okonkwo. The white missionary at Mbanta articulates the uninformed prejudice against native religion and culture, which the novel has just elaborated in fine detail. Achebe introduces the missionary comically; the villagers mock his interpreter’s use of their language as he mistakes the word meaning “my buttocks” for “myself.” Many of the Mbanta men are astounded at the missionaries’ pronouncements that their gods are dead and have no power; they laugh with incredulity at a missionary’s claims that his is the only living and powerful god. Things Fall Apart ends tragically, with Okonkwo

Chinua Achebe, 1930

humiliated by the beating he received in the white man’s jail and with his deep disappointment that the men of Umuofia would not stand up, as he had, to the encroachment of the English. Okonkwo’s death is symbolic, in many ways, of the death of Ibo society itself; the novel questions whether that death was necessary and gives its African readers reason to believe in the importance of preserving what is best in their traditions.

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[Achebe’s characters] have a vital relationship with the social and economic

landscape. We can see, and feel, how his characters, their worldview, their very aspirations, have

m@ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Gikandi, Simon. Reading Chinua Achebe: Language and Ideology in Fiction. 1991. Innes, C. L. Chinua Achebe. 1990. , and Bernth Lindfors, eds. Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe. 1978.

lyasere, Solomon Ognede, ed. Understanding Things Fall Apart: Selected Essays and Criticism. 1998.

Killam, G. D. The Writings ofChinua Achebe. 1977. Ogede, Ode. Achebe and the Politics of Representation: Form Against Itself from Colonial Conquest and Occupation to Post-Independence Disillusionment. 2001. Turkington, Kate. Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart. 1977. Wren, Robert M. Achebe’s World: The Historical and Cultural Context of the Novels of Chinua Achebe. 1980.

BB PRONUNCIATION

Chinua Achebe: CHIN-wah ah-CHAY-bay Chielo: chee-AY-loh egwugwu: ay-GWOO-gwoo Erulu: ay-ROO-loo Ezeani: ay-zay-AH-nee Ezeugo: ay-zay-OO-goh Ibo: EE-boh Idemili: ee-DAY-mee-lee Ikemefuna: ee-kay-may-FOO-nah Mbari: em-BAH-ree Ndulue: en-doo-loo-AY Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: en-GOO-gee wah thee-ONG-oh Nwakibie: nwah-kee-BEE-ay Nwayieke: nwah-yee-AY-kay Umuofia: oo-MWOH-fee-ah

been shaped by a particular environment in a particular

historical place. They live in history . . .

because they are the makers of history. — Nouci Wa

THIONG’O, novelist and critic, 1972

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CHINUA ACHEBE

Things Fall Apart Part I 1

Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought rested Amalinze was s the great wrestler te enc aerees honor to his village by throwing inaaan ine the ndmen agreedwas one ae OEthe fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights. The drums beat and the flutes sang and the spectators held their breath. Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Every nerve and every muscle stood out on their arms, on their backs and their thighs, and one almost heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end Okonkwo threw the Cat. That was many years ago, twenty years or more, and during this time Okonkwo’s fame had grown like a bush-fire in the harmattan. He was tall and huge, and his bushy eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look. He breathed heavily, and it was said that, when heslept, his wives and children in their_ houses could hear himn breathe. br When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on 1springs, as ifhewas going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on

people quite often. He

hada slight stammier and whenever he was angry and could

not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had had no patience with his father.

~~ tS, Unoka, for that was his father’s name, had died ten years ago. In his day he was_

lazy and improvident and ind was quitee incapable inc of thinking

about tomorrow. If any

money came his yway, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds of palmwine, called round his neighbors and made merry. He always said that whenever he saw a dead man’s mouth he saw the folly of not eatingg what one had in one’s lifetime. |ae

Unoka

was,‘Ofcourse, adebtor, dé and he “owed ¢ ‘everyy neighbor so some 1e money, from a

fewcowries' to quite substantial amounts. He was tall but very thin and had a slight stoop. He wore a haggard and mournful look except when he was drinking or playing on his flute. He was very good on his flute, and his happiest moments were the two or three moons after the harvest when the village musicians brought down their instruments, hung above the fireplace. Unoka would play with them, his face beaming with blessedness and peace. Sometimes another village would ask Unoka’s band and their dancing egwugwu’ to

"cowries: A sixty-pound bag of cowries—mollusk shells used as currency—was worth about one pound sterling. * egwugwu: Dancers who masquerade as spirits of the village ancestors.

Things Fall Apart, Part 1,1

come and stay with them and teach them their tunes. They would go to such hosts for as long as three or four markets,’ making music and feasting. Unoka loved the good fare and the good fellowship, and he loved this season of the year, when the rains had stopped and the sun rose every morning with dazzling beauty. And it was not too hot either, because the cold and dry harmattan wind was blowing down

from the north. Some years the harmattan was very severe and a dense haze hung on the atmosphere. Old men and children would then sit round log fires, warming their bodies. Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first kites that returned with the dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to them. He would remember his own childhood, how he had often wandered around looking for a kite sailing leisurely against the blue sky. As soon as he found one he would sing with his whole being, welcoming it back from its long, long journey, and asking it if it had brought

Fe

at him yee and children had barely enough to eat. People laughed a —

was a lo because he SS ea ee

he never paid back. But Unoka wassuch amanthathealways succeeded inborrow-One day a neighbor called Okoye came in to see him. He was reclining on a mud bed in his hut playing on the flute. He immediately rose and shook hands with

sat Okoye, who then unrolled the goatskin which he carried under his arm, and

down. Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper, and a lump of white chalk."

his “T have Rola? he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to

guest. “Thank you. He who brings kola brings life. But I think you ought to break it,” replied Okoye, passing back the disc. before “No, it is for you, I think,” and they argued like this for a few moments

the lump of Unoka accepted the honor of breaking the kola. Okoye, meanwhile, took toe. chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big life and health, and for s ancestor As he broke the kola, Unoka prayed to their

talked about many for protection against their enemies. When they had eaten they the next ancesabout yams, the g things: about the heavy rains which were drownin was never Unoka Mbaino. of village tral feast and about the impending war with the sight of \ the bear not could and happy when it came to wars. He was in fact a coward . beamed face his and music, about blood. And so he changed the subject and talked ekwe the of s rhythm te intrica and He could hear in his mind’s ear the blood-stirring

day; Afo, weeks; the Ibo week has four days— Eke, the market 3 three or four markets: One-and-a-half to two

days. a half-working day; and Oye and Nkwo, full working offer a ies. Kola nuts, like coffee, contain caffeine and so 4kola .. . chalk: All items used in hospitality ceremon and the chalk is used for visitors kola; for ly especial reserved pepper black a is mild stimulant; alligator pepper to draw their personal mark.

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CHINUA ACHEBE

and the udu and the ogene,’ and he could hear his own flute weaving in and out of

them, decorating them with a colorful and plaintive tune. The total effect was gay and brisk, but if one picked out the flute as it went up and down and then broke up

into short snatches, one saw that there was sorrow and grief there. Okoye was also a musician. He played on the ogene. But he was not a failure like Unoka. He had a large barn full of yams and he had three wives. And now he was going to take the Tdemili’ title, the third highest in the land. It was a very expensive ceremony-and he was gathering all his resources together. That was in fact the reason why he had come to see Unoka. He cleared his throat and began: “Thank you for the kola. You may have heard of the title I intend to take shortly.” Having spoken plainly so far, Okoye said the next half a dozen sentences in proverbs. Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. Okoye was a great talker and he spoke for a long time, skirting round the subject and then hitting it finally. In short, he was asking Unoka to return the two hundred cowries he had borrowed from him more than two years before. As'soon as Unoka understood what his friend was driving at, he burst out laughing. He laughed loud and long and his voice rang out clear as the ogene, and tears stood in his eyes. His visitor was amazed, and sat speechless. At the end, Unoka was able to give an answer between fresh outbursts of mirth. “Look at that wall,” he said, pointing at the far wall of his hut, which was rubbed

with red earth so that it shone. “Look at those lines of chalk”; and Okoye saw groups of short perpendicular lines drawn in chalk. There were five groups, and the smallest group had ten lines. Unoka had a sense of the dramatic and so he allowed a pause, in which he took a pinch of snuff and sneezed noisily, and then he continued: “Each group there represents a debt to someone, and each stroke is one hundred cowries. You see, I owe that man a thousand cowries. But he has not come to wake me up in the morning for it. I shall pay you, but not today. Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them. I shall pay my big debts first.” And he took another pinch of snuff, as if that was paying the big debts first. Okoye rolled his goatskin and departed. When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt. Any wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of him? Fortunately, among these

people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father. Okonkwo was clearly cut out for great things. He was still young but he had won fame as the greatest wrestler in the nine villages. He was a wealthy farmer

and had two barns full of yaiis, and had just married histhird wife. Tocrown it all

hehad-taken two titles an € prowess in two inter-tribal wars. And so although Okonkwo was still young, he wasalready one of the greatest men of his time. ee was respectedaang. hispeople,, but achievement was revered. As the Ja

a

°ekwe .. . ogene: A wooden drum, clay drum, and iron gong, respectively. °|demili: A river god, associated with the sacred python.

ee

Things Fall Apart, Part I, 2

elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings. Okonkwo had clearly washed his hands and so he ate with kings and elders. And that was how he ame to

look after the doomed lad who was sacrificed to the village of Umuofia by théir

neighbors fo avoid war and

bloodshed. The ill-fated tac'was called tkemefuna. ~~ 2

Okonkwo had just blown out the palm-oil lamp and stretched himself on his bamboo bed when he heard the ogene of the town crier piercing the still night air. Gome, gome, gome, gome, boomed the hollow metal. Then the crier gave his message, and at the end of it beat his instrument again. And this was the message. Every man of Umuofia was asked to gather at the market place tomorrow morning. Okonkwo wondered what was amiss, for he knew certainly that something was amiss. He had discerned a clear overtone of tragedy in the crier’s voice, and even now he could still hear it as it grew dimmer and dimmer in the distance. The night was very quiet. It was always quiet except on moonlight nights. Darkness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest among them. Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits. Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark. A snake was never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string. And so on this particular night as the crier’s voice was gradually swallowed up in the distance, silence returned to the world, a vibrant silence made more intense by the universal trill of a million

million forest insects. On a moonlight night it would be different. The happy voices of children playing in open fields would then be heard. And perhaps those not so young would be their playing in pairs in less open places, and old men and women would remember fora _ youth. As the Ibo say: “When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry walk.” villages of But this particular night was dark and silent. And in all the nine tomorrow mornUmuofia a town crier with his ogene asked every man to be present

the emergency— ing. Okonkwo on his bamboo bed tried to figure out the nature of and he was not war with a neighboring clan? That seemed the most likely reason, ll

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4

his father he could stand afraid of war. He was a man of action, a man of war. Unlike to brin home a human the look of blood. In Umuofia’s latest war he was the first

he was not an old man yet. On. great occasions head. That was his fifth head; and ine from his first _ Such as the funeral of4 village celebrity he drank his palm-w froma tread—_—_—_—_—___ been about ten thouIn the morning the market place was full. There must have ee stood up in the sand men there, all talking in low voices. At last peas ’ and on each occasion he midst of them and bellowed four times, “Umuofia kwenu,” air with a clenched fist. And ten faced a different direction and seemed to push the

7 believed such stories were unworthy of the Lord’s table.. were beaten ~ There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums went mad. The overfor him. Mr. Smith danced a furious step and so the drums ng hand now flourzealous converts who had smarted under Mr. Brown's restraini the snake-priest who was \ ished in full favor. One of them was Enoch, the son of Enoch’s devotion to the new \ believed to have killed and eaten the sacred python. that the villagers called him / faith had seemed so much greater than Mr. Brown’s ie” ved. the outsider who wept louder than the berea

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Enoch was short and slight of build, and always seemed in great haste. His feet were short and broad, and when he stood or walked his heels came together and his feet opened outwards as if they had quarreled and meant to go in different directions. Such was the excessive energy bottled up in Enoch’s small body that it was always erupting in quarrels and fights. On Sundays he always imagined that the sermon was preached for the benefit of his enemies. And if he happened to sit near one of them he would occasionally turn to give him a meaningful look, as if to say, “I told you so.” It was Enoch who touched off the great conflict between church and clan in Umuofia which had been gathering since Mr. Brown left. It happened during the annual ceremony which was held in honor of the earth deity. At such times the ancestors of the clan who had been committed to Mother Earth at their death emerged again as egwugwu through tiny ant-holes. [ One of the greatest crimes a man could commit was to unmask an egwugwu in public, or to say or do anything which might reduce its immortal prestige in the eyes of the uninitiated. And this was what Enoch did. The annual worship of the earth goddess fell on a Sunday, and the masked spirits were abroad. The Christian women who had been to church could not therefore go home. Some of their men had gone out to beg the egwugwu to retire for a short while for the women to pass. They agreed and were already retiring, when Enoch boasted aloud that they would not dare to touch a Christian. Whereupon they all came back and one of them gave Enoch a good stroke of the cane, which was always carried. Enoch fell on him and tore off his mask. The other egwugwu immediately surrounded their desecrated companion, to shield him from the profane gaze of women and children, and led him away. Enoch had killed an ancestral spirit, and Umuofia was thrown into confusion. , That night the Mother of the Spirits walked the length and breadth of the clan, / weeping for her murdered son. It was a terrible night. Not even the oldest man in Umuofia had ever heard such a strange and fearful sound, and it was never to be

heard again. It seemed as if the very soul of the tribe wept for a great evil that was coming — its own death. On the next day all the masked egwugwu of Umuofia assembled in the marketplace. They came from all the quarters of the clan and even from the neighboring villages. The dreaded Otakagu came from Imo, and Ekwensu, dangling a white cock, arrived from Uli. It was a terrible gathering. The eerie voices of countless spirits, the bells that clattered behind some of them, and the clash of machetes as ‘theyran forwards and backwards and saluted one another, sent tremors of fear into every heart. For the first time in living memory the sacred bull-roarer was heard inbroad daylight. From the marketplace the furious band made for Enoch’s compound. Some of the elders of the clan went with them, wearing heavy protections of charms and amulets. These were men whose arms were strong in ogwu, or medicine. As for the ordinary men and women, they listened from the safety of their huts. The leaders of the Christians had met together at Mr. Smith’s parsonage on the previous night. As they deliberated they could hear the Mother of Spirits wailing for her son. The chilling sound affected Mr. Smith, and for the first time he seemed to be afraid.

Things Fall Apart, Part II, 22

“What are they planning to do?” he asked. No one knew, because such a thing had never happened before. Mr. Smith would have sent for the District Commissioner and his court messengers, but they had gone on tour on the previous day. “One thing is clear,’ said Mr. Smith. “We cannot offer physical resistance to them. Our strength lies in the Lord.” They knelt down together and prayed to God for delivery. “O Lord, save Thy people,” cried Mr. Smith. “And bless Thine inheritance,” replied the men. They decided that Enoch should be hidden in the parsonage for a day or two. Enoch himself was greatly disappointed when he heard this, for he had hoped that a holy war was imminent; and there were a few other Christians who thought like him. But wisdom prevailed in the camp of the faithful and many lives were thus saved’ a

;

i

~The band of egwugwu moved like a furious whirlwind to Enoch’s compound and with machete and fire reduced it to a desolate heap. And from there they made for the church, intoxicated with destruction. Mr. Smith was in his church when he heard the masked spirits coming. He walked quietly to the door which commanded the approach to the church compound, and stood there. But when the first three or four egwugwu appeared on the church compound he nearly bolted. He overcame this impulse and instead of running away he went down the two steps that led up to the church and walked towards the approaching spirits. They surged forward, and a long stretch of the bamboo fence with which the church compound was surrounded gave way before them. Discordant bells clanged, machetes clashed and the air was full of dust and weird sounds. Mr. Smith heard a sound of footsteps behind him. He turned round and saw Okeke, his interpreter. Okeke had not been on the best of terms with his master since he had strongly condemned Enoch’s behavior at the meeting of the leaders of the church during the night. Okeke had gone as far as to say that Enoch should not be hidden in the parMr. Smith sonage, because he would only draw the wrath of the clan on the pastor. mornthat advice his sought not had and language, had rebuked him in very strong spirits, angry the confronting him by stood and up ing. But now, as he came was deep gratitude Mr. Smith looked at him and smiled. It was a wan smile, but there

there. unexpected For a brief moment the onrush of the egwugwu was checked by the silence tense the like check, ary moment a only was it composure of the two men. But ed swallow It first. the than greater was onrush second between blasts of thunder. The was tumult and there up the two men. Then an unmistakable voice rose above the began to speak. Ajofia and men, two the around immediate silence. Space was made head and spokesman of Ajofia was the leading egwugwu of Umuofia. He was the His voice was unmistakable the nine ancestors who administered justice in the clan. the agitated spirits. He then and so he was able to bring immediate peace to smoke rose from his head. addressed Mr. Smith, and as he spoke clouds of

the language in which “The body of the white man, I salute you,” he said, using immortals spoke to men.

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“The body of the white man, do you know me?” he asked. Mr. Smith looked at his interpreter, but Okeke, who was a native of distant Umuru, was also at a loss.

Ajofia laughed in his guttural voice. It was like the laugh of rusty metal. “They are strangers,” he said, “and they are ignorant. But let that pass.” He turned round to his comrades and saluted them, calling them the fathers of Umuofia. He dug his rattling spear into the ground and it shook with metallic life. Then he turned once more to the missionary and his interpreter. “Tell the white man that we will not do him any harm,” he said to the interpreter. “Tell him to go back to his house and leave us alone. We liked his brother who was with us before. He was foolish, but we liked him, and for his sake we shall not harm

his brother. But this shrine which he built must be destroyed. We shall no longer allow it in our midst. It has bred untold abominations and we have come to put an end to it.” He turned to his comrades. “Fathers of Umuofia, I salute you”; and they

replied with one guttural voice. He turned again to the missionary. “You can stay with us if you like our ways. You can worship your own god. It is good that a man should worship the gods and the spirits of his fathers. Go back to your house so that you may not be hurt. Our anger is great but we have held it down so that we can talk to you.” Mr. Smith said to his interpreter: “Tell them to go away from here. This is the house of God and I will not live to see it desecrated.” Okeke interpreted wisely to the spirits and leaders of Umuofia: “The white man says he is happy you have come to him with your grievances, like friends. He will be happy if you leave the matter in his hands.” “We cannot leave the matter in his hands because he does not understand our customs, just as we do not understand his. We say he is foolish because he does not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his. Let him go away.” Mr. Smith stood his ground. But he could not save his church. When the egwugwu went away the red-earth church which Mr. Brown had built was a pile of earth and ashes. And for the moment the spirit of the clan was pacified.

23

For the first time in many years Okonkwo had a feeling that was akin to happiness. The times which had altered so unaccountably during his exile seemed to be coming round again. The clan which had turned false on him appeared to be making amends. He had spoken violently to his clansmen when they had met in the marketplace 'to decide on their action. And they had listened to him with respect. It was like the | good old days again, when a warrior was a warrior. Although they had not agreed to | kill the missionary or drive away the Christians, they had agreed to do something q substantial. And they had done it. Okonkwo was almost happy again.

For two days after the destruction of the church, nothing happened. Every man _ in Umuofia went about armed with a gun or a machete. They would not be caught _unawares, like the men of Abame.

Things Fall Apart, Part UI, 23

1687

Then the District Commissioner returned from his tour. Mr. Smith went immediately to him and they had a long discussion. The men of Umuofia did not take any notice of this, and if they did, they thought it was not important. The missionary often went to see his brother white man. There was nothing strange in that. Three days later the District Commissioner sent his sweet-tongued messenger to the leaders of Umuofia asking them to meet him in his headquarters. That also was not strange. He often asked them to hold such palavers, as he called them. Okonkwo was among the six leaders he invited. Okonkwo warned the others to be fully armed. “An Umuofia man does not refuse a call,” he said. “He may refuse to do what he is asked; he does not refuse to be asked. But the times have changed, and we must be fully prepared.” And so the six men went to see the District Commissioner, armed with their machetes. They did not carry guns, for that would be unseemly. They were led into the courthouse where the District Commissioner sat. He received them politely. They unslung their goatskin bags and their sheathed machetes, put them on the floor, and sat down. “I have asked you to come,” began the Commissioner, “because of what happened during my absence. I have been told a few things but I cannot believe them until I have heard your own side. Let us talk about it like friends and find a way of ensuring that it does not happen again.” Ogbuefi Ekwueme rose to his feet and began to tell the story. “Wait a minute,” said the Commissioner. “I want to bring in my men so that they too can hear your grievances and take warning. Many of them come from distant places and although they speak your tongue they are ignorant of your customs. James! Go and bring in the men.” His interpreter left the courtroom and soon returned with twelve men. They sat together with the men of Umuofia, and Ogbuefi me began to tell the story of how Enoch murdered an egwugwu. E It happened so quickly that the six men did not see it coming. There was only a| The six men brief scuffle, too brief even to allow the drawing of a sheathed machete.

were handcuffed and led into the guardroom. a” said the District Commissioner to them later, & \o ther an 1

1

cefuladministration

py. It vou

d

| ill-treats you we s

to ill-treat others. We have a court of

my own country law where we judge cases and administer justice just as it is done in to molest together under a great queen. I have brought you here because you joined in happen not must others, to burn people’s houses and their place of worship. That decided have I world. the dominion of our queen, the most powerful ruler in the be released as soon that you will pay a fine of two hundred bags of cowries. You will What do you people. your as you agree to this and undertake to collect that fine from

say to that?”

ne

sioner left them for a ‘@The’six men remained sullen and silent and the Commis oom, to treat the men while. He told the court messengers, when he left the guardr

a. They said, “Yes, sir,’ and with respect because they were the leaders of Umuofi saluted.

“gy, dance+0

this \d 4rue?

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As soon as the District Commissioner left, the head messenger, who was also the prisoners’ barber, took down his razor and shaved off all the hair on the men’s heads. They were still handcuffed, and they just sat and moped. “Who is the chief among you?” the court messengers asked in jest. “We see that every pauper wears the anklet of title in Umuofia. Does it cost as much as ten cowries?” The six men ate nothing throughout that day and the next. They were not even given any water to drink, and they could not go out to urinate or go into the bush when they were pressed. At night the messengers came in to taunt them and to knock their shaven heads together. Even when the men were left alone they found no words to speak to one another. It was only on the third day, when they could no longer bear the hunger and the insults, that they began to talk about giving in. “We should have killed the white man if you had listened to me,” Okonkwo snarled.

“We could have been in Umuru now waiting to be hanged,” someone said to him. “Who wants to kill the white man?” asked a messenger who had just rushed in. Nobody spoke. “You are not satisfied with your crime, but you must kill the white man on top of it.” He carried a strong stick, and he hit each man a few blows on the head and

back. Okonkwo was choked with hate. As soon as the six men were locked up, court messengers went into Umuofia to tell the people that their leaders would not be released unless they paid a fine of two hundred and fifty bags of cowries. “Unless you pay the fine immediately,” said their head-man, “we will take your leaders to Umuru before the big white man, and hang them.” This story spread quickly through the villages, and was added to as it went. Some said that the men had already been taken to Umuru and would be hanged on the following day. Some said that their families would also be hanged. Others said that soldiers were already on their way to shoot the people of Umuofia as they had done in Abame.

#

It was the time of the full moon. But that night the voice of children was nee heard. The village ilo where they always gathered for a moon-play was empty. The women of Iguedo did not meet in their secret enclosure to learn a new dance to be displayed later to the village. Young men who were always abroad in the moonlight kept their huts that night. Their manly voices were not heard on the village paths as they went to visit their friends and lovers. Umuofia was like a startled animal with ears erect, sniffing the silent, ominous air and id not knowing \which way to run. — The silence was broken by the village crier beating his sonorous ogene. He called every man in Umuofia, from the Akakanma age group upwards, to a meeting in the marketplace after the morning meal. He went from one end of the village tothe other and walked all its breadth. He did not leave out any of the main footpaths. Okonkwo’s compound was like a deserted homestead. It was as if cold water had been poured on it. His family was all there, but everyone spoke in whispers. His

Things Fall Apart, Part HI, 24

' daughter Ezinma had broken her twenty-eight day visit to the family of her future husband, and returned home when she heard that her father had been imprisoned, and was going to be hanged. As soon as she got home she went to Obierika to ask ~ what the men of Umuofia were going to do about it. But Obierika had not been home since morning. His wives thought he had gone to a secret meeting. Ezinma was Satisfied that something was being done. On the morning after the village crier’s appeal the men of Umuofia met in the marketplace and decided to collect without delay two hundred and fifty bags of cowries to appease the white man. They did not know that fifty bags would go to the court messengers, who had increased the fine for that purpose.

24 Okonkwo and his fellow prisoners were set free as soon as the fine was paid. The District Commissioner spoke to them again about the great queen, and about peace and good government. But the men did not listen. They just sat and looked at him and at his interpreter. In the end they were given back their bags and sheathed machetes and told to go home. They rose and left the courthouse. They neither spoke to anyone nor among themselves. The courthouse, like the church, was built a little way outside the village. The footpath that linked them was a very busy one because it also led to the stream, beyond the court. It was open and sandy. Footpaths were open and sandy in the dry season. But when the rains came the bush grew thick on either side and closed in on the path. It was now dry season. As they made their way to the village the six men met women and children going to the stream with their water-pots. But the men wore such heavy and fearsome looks that the women and children did not say “nno” or “welcome” to them,

but edged out of the way to let them pass. In the village little groups of men joined six them until they became a sizable company. They walked silently. As each of the The vilhim. with men got to his compound, he turned in, taking some of the crowd ; lage was astir in a silent, suppressed way. the six that spread news as Ezinma had prepared some food for her father as soon had He indedly. men would be released. She took it to him in his obi. He ate absent-m in gathered had friends no appetite; he only ate to please her. His male relations and the noticed they but his obi, and Obierika was urging him to eat. Nobody else spoke, into his flesh. long stripes on Okonkwo’s back where the warder’s whip had cut

iron gong and The village crier was abroad again in the night. He beat his e knew that Everyon g. announced that another meeting would be held in the mornin ng. happeni were that Umuofia was at last going to speak its mind about the things mixed now was heart his Okonkwo slept very little that night. The bitterness in he had brought down with a kind of childlike excitement. Before he had gone to bed from exile. He had shaken his war dress, which he had not touched since his return head-gear and his shield. out his smoked raffia skirt and examined his tall feather They were all satisfactory, he had thought.

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As he lay on his bamboo bed he thought about the treatment he had received in the white man’s court, and he swore vengeance. If Umuofia decided on war, all would be well. But if they chose to be cowards he would go out and avenge himself. He thought about wars in the past. The noblest, he-thought, was the war against Isike. In those days Okudo was still alive. Okudo sang a war song in a way that no other man could. He was not a fighter, but his voice turned every man into a lion. “Worthy men are no more,” Okonkwo sighed as he remembered those days. “Tsike will never forget how we slaughtered them in that war. We killed twelve of their men and they killed only two of ours. Before the end of the fourth market week they were suing for peace. Those were days when men were men.” As he thought of these things he heard the sound of the iron gong in the distance. He listened carefully, and could just hear the crier’s voice. But it was very faint. He turned on his bed and his back hurt him. He ground his teeth. The crier was drawing nearer and nearer until he passed by Okonkwo’s compound. “The greatest obstacle in Umuofia,’ Okonkwo thought bitterly, “is that coward, Egonwanne. His sweet tongue can change fire into cold ash. When he speaks he moves our men to impotence. If they had ignored his womanish wisdom five years ago, we would not have come to this.” He ground his teeth. “Tomorrow he will tell

them that our fathers never fought a ‘war of blame. If they listen to him I shall leave them and plan my own revenge.” The crier’s voice had once more become faint, and the distance had taken the harsh edge off his iron gong. Okonkwo turned from one side to the other and derived a kind of pleasure from the pain his back gave him. “Let Egonwanne talk about a ‘war of blame’ tomorrow and I shall show him my back and head.” He ground his teeth.

The marketplace began to fill as soon as the sun rose. Obierika was waiting in his obi when Okonkwo came along and called him. He hung his goatskin bag and his sheathed machete on his shoulder and went out to join him. Obierika’s hut was close to the road and he saw every man who passed to the marketplace. He had exchanged greetings with many who had already passed that morning. When Okonkwo and Obierika got to the meeting place there were already so many people that if one threw up a grain of sand it would not find its way to the earth again. And many more people were coming from every quarter of the nine villages. It warmed Okonkwo’s heart to see such strength of numbers. But he was looking for one man in particular, the man whose tongue he dreaded and despised so much. “Can you see him?” he asked Obierika.

“Who?” “Egonwanne, he said, his eyes roving from one corner of the huge marketplace to the other. Most of the men sat on wooden stools they had brought with them. ~

“No,” said Obierika, casting his eyes over the crowd. “Yes, there he is, under the

| silk-cotton tree. Are you afraid he would convince us not to fight?” “Afraid? I do not care what he does to you. I despise him and those who listen to him. I shall fight alone if Ichoose.”

Things Fall Apart, Part II, 24

They spoke at the top of their voices because everybody was talking, and it was like the sound of a great market. “T shall wait till he has spoken,” Okonkwo thought. “Then I shall speak.” “But how do you know he will speak against war?” Obierika asked after a while. “Because I know he is a coward,” said Okonkwo. Obierika did not hear the rest of what he said because at that moment somebody touched his shoulder from behind and he turned round to shake hands and exchange greetings with five or six friends. Okonkwo did not turn round even though he knew the voices. He was in no mood to exchange greetings. But one of the men touched him and asked about the people of his compound. “They are well,” he replied without interest. The first man to speak to Umuofia that morning was Okika, one of the six who had been imprisoned. Okika was a great man and an orator. But he did not have the booming voice which a first speaker must use to establish silence in the assembly of the clan. Onyeka had such a voice; and so he was asked to salute Umuofia before

Okika began to speak. “Umuofia kwenu!” he bellowed, raising his left arm and pushing the air with his open hand. “Yaa!” roared Umuofia. “Umuofia kwenu!” he bellowed again, and again and again, facing a new direction each time. And the crowd answered, “Yaa!” There was immediate silence as though cold water had been poured on a roaring flame. Okika sprang to his feet and also saluted his clansmen four times. Then he n to speak: bega “You all know why we are here, when we ought to be building our barns or mending our huts, when we should be putting our compounds in order. My father used to say to me: ‘Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after itslife? When I saw you all pouring into this meeting from all our the quarters of our clan so early in the morning, I knew that something was after life” He paused for a brief moment and then began again: is “All our gods are weeping. Idemili is weeping, Ogwugwu is weeping, Agbala shameful the of weeping, and all the others. Our dead fathers are weeping because eyes.” He sacrilege they are suffering and the abomination we have all seen with our stopped again to steady his trembling voice. greater valor. “This is a great gathering. No clan can boast of greater numbers or here?”A deep murBut are we all here? I ask you: Are all the sons of Umuofia with us mur swept through the crowd. several ways. “They are not,” he said. “They have broken the clan and gone their but our brothers We who are here this morning have remained true to our fathers, the stranger fight If we have deserted us and joined a stranger to soil their fatherland. we must do But clansman. we shall hit our brothers and perhaps shed the blood of a s. But a brother killed their ‘t. Our fathers never dreamed of such a thing, they never have never fathers would white man never came to them. So we must do what our “Men replied: wing and he done. Eneke the bird was asked why he was always on the

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have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I have learned to fly without perching on a twig. We must root out this evil. And if our brothers take the side of evil we must root them out too. And we must do it now. We must bail this water now that it is only ankle deep. . . .” / At this point there was a sudden stir in the crowd and every eye was turned in one direction. There was a sharp bend in the road that led from the marketplace to the white man’s court, and to the stream beyond it. And so no one had seen the approach of the five court messengers until they had come round the bend, a few paces from the edge of the crowd. Okonkwo was sitting at the edge. He sprang to his feet as soon as he saw who it was. He confronted the head messenger, trembling with hate, unable to utter a word. The man was fearless and stood his ground, his four men lined up behind him.

In that brief moment the world seemed to stand still, waiting. There was utter silence. The men of Umuofia were merged into the mute backcloth of trees and giant creepers, waiting. The spell was broken by the head messenger. “Let me pass!” he ordered. “What do you want here?” “The white man whose power you know too well has ordered this meeting to stop.” In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete. The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless. Okonkwo’s machete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body. The waiting backcloth jumped into tumultuous life and the meeting was stopped. Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man. He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action. He discerned fright in that tumult. He heard voices asking: “Why did he do it?” He wiped his machete on the sand and went away.

25

When the District Commissioner arrived at Okonkwo’s compound at the head of an armed band of soldiers and court messengers he found a small crowd of men sitting wearily in the obi. He commanded them to come outside, and they obeyed without a murmur. “Which among you is called Okonkwo?” he asked pce: 6 his interpreter. “He is not here,” replied Obierika. “Where is he?” “He is not here!” The Commissioner became angry and red in the face. He warned the men that unless they produced Okonkwo forthwith he would lock them all up. The men murmured among themselves, and Obierika spoke again. “We can take you where he is, and perhaps your men will help us.” The Commissioner did not understand what Obierika meant when he said, “Perhaps your men will help us.’ One of the most infuriating habits of these people was their love of superfluous words, he thought.

Things Fall Apart, Part II, 25

Obierika with five or six others led the way. The Commissioner and his men followed, their firearms held at the ready. He had warned Obierika that if he and his men played any monkey tricks they would be shot. And so they went. There was a small bush behind Okonkwo’s compound. The only opening into this bush from the compound was a little round hole in the red-earth wall through which fowls went in and out in their endless search for food. The hole would not let a man through. It was to this bush that Obierika led the Commissioner and his men. They skirted round the compound, keeping close to the wall. The only sound they made was with their feet as they crushed dry leaves. . Then they came to the tree from which Okonkwo’s body was dangling, and they stopped dead. “Perhaps your men can help us bring him down and bury him,” said Obierika. “We have sent for strangers from another village to do it for us, but they may be a ) long time coming.” The District Commissioner changed instantaneously. The resolute administrator in him gave way to the student of primitive customs. “Why can’t you take him down yourselves?” he asked. “It is against our custom,” said one of the men. “It is an abomination for a man ) to take his own life. It is an offense against the Earth, and a man who commits it will

not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may touch it. That is why we ask your people to bring him down, because you are strangers.” “Will you bury him like any other man?” asked the Commissioner. “We cannot bury him. Only strangers can. We shall pay your men to do it. When \ he has been buried we will then do our duty by him. We shall make sacrifices to} a cleanse the desecrated land.” turned body, dangling friend’s his at steadily gazing Obierika, who had been

suddenly to the District Commissioner and said ferociously: “That man was one of

the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself; and now he will be

* buried like a dog. . . ” He could not say any more. His voice trembled and choked his words. “Shut up!” shouted one of the messengers, quite unnecessarily. “Take down the body,’ the Commissioner ordered his chief messenger, “and

to the court he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back . The story of material new some him brought thought about that book. Every day

eady lal

CALTLTUE.

1693

IN

THE

WORLD

Images of Africa

p. 1722 p. 1604 Pp. 159

Chinua Achebe suggests in his essay “An Image of Africa” that he wrote the novel Things Fall Apart as a response to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its white European perspective on Africa. Even though Conrad’s novel may offer a more sympathetic treatment of Africa than that found in the Tarzan stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), written at about the same time, Heart of Darkness is nonetheless, as Achebe contends, a dis-

doo-BOYZ

p. 1703

torted, one-sided view, an imperial perspective that constructs Africa as a savage continent in need of civilizing and Christianizing. It is black to Europe’s white; dark instead of light. It is _ violent, wild, Other. Africa, identified by modern anthropologists as the site of Homo sapiens’ first emergence, was not thought of at the turn of the century as a homeland. The West traced its origins to Greece and Rome, not to Cairo and Timbuktu. Many colonized blacks and those of the Diaspora living in Europe and America absorbed this Eurocentric point of view, and as they denigrated Africa, they denied their heritage and themselves. W. E. B. Du Bois describes this phenomenon in The Souls of Black Folk as the African American “double-consciousness,’ a state in which the

African is in conflict with the American. Along with many other black writers of the twentieth century, Du Bois sought to heal this racial self-alienation by changing the Western image of Africa, challenging the colonial oppression that supported it, and celebrating a positive account of African heritage.

1694

Introduction

Cover of The Missionary News,

5

es

March 15, 1866

Nineteenth-century missionary societies

published periodicals to generate support

and to report on their progress in the field. The illustrated publications were a source of cultural images for audiences in colonizing nations. This cover depicts a European view of an African town on the Congo river. (The Art Archive)

PAN-AFRICANISM

By affirming his own African heritage and encouraging other blacks to do the same, Du Bois allied himself with

a movement later called

Pan-Africanism that was based on the idea that blacks everywhere shared a common heritage and a common destiny. Historians trace the roots of the movement back to the late eighteenth century, when Sierra Leone was established in 1787 as a refuge in west Africa for freed and runaway slaves. American abolitionists facilitated the mid ninefounding of a similar state, Liberia, in the 1820s. By the

e teenth century some historians had begun to develop a perspectiv includon Africa that highlighted the greatness in the African past, apologists ing the achievements of the ancient Egyptians. Yet even Blyden for “the dark continent,” such as Liberian author Edward

to be in a (1832-1912), considered late-nineteenth-century Africa

view of “state of barbarism.” Blyden accepted a Western progressivist ‘Lhere Africa and seems to echo Conrad’s Marlow when he asserts:

1695

1696

IN THE WORLD:

IMAGES OF AFRICA

Aaron Douglas,

Into Bondage, 1936.

Oil on canvas

Douglas, an artist of the Harlem Renaissance, painted murals on public buildings and founded the art department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. (In the Collection of The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Museum Purchase and partial gift from Thurlow Evans Tibbs Jr., The Evans Tibbs Collection)

is not a single mental or moral deficiency now existing among Africans, .. . to which we cannot find a parallel in the past history of Europe.” Blyden and his contemporaries thought that blacks who returned to Africa would bring with them the civilizing influences of the West and that these would help to transform the continent. Du Bois, who coined the term Pan-Negroism to characterize his

ideas, was part of a philosophical tradition that can be traced to the Romantic nationalism of German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803). Herder, who influenced European nationalism One ever feels his two-ness, — an Amer-

ican, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts,

two unreconciled strivings; two

warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength

alone keeps it from being torn asunder. -W.E. B. Du Bois

in such countries as Italy and Germany, described world history as the development of groups of people bound together by language, culture, mythology, and traditions. Du Bois sought to reconnect blacks in the diaspora with their African heritage. He saw African Americans as the “advance guard of the Negro people,” for they had the education and the experience of the modern world that would enable them to lead the movement, which Du Bois considered part of the international struggle for social justice. He organized a PanAfrican Congress in Paris in 1919 to coincide with the Versailles

peace conference that ended World War I, hoping to convince world leaders that the Wilsonian principle of self-determination should be

Introduction

applied to Africans as well as Europeans, giving Africans the power to decide their future. Du Bois saw the Pan-African movement as part of the larger fight against European colonialism; his contemporary at the beginning of the century, Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), a Jamaican who

had emigrated to New York City, emphasized another dimension of the movement— the desire of American blacks to return to the African homeland. Known as the “Black Moses,” Garvey preached

“Back to Africa” and “Africa for the Africans,” leading thousands in a march through the streets of Harlem. Few of his followers actually returned to Africa, however, and Garvey’s crusade fell apart in the mid twenties when he was imprisoned for mail fraud. Du Bois, however, maintained the Pan-African dream through-

out his long life. He convened several Pan-African congresses in the period between the wars, finally passing the mantle of leadership to a younger generation, in particular to Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972)

KWAH-may

of Ghana at the fifth Pan-African Congress held in Manchester,

en-KROO-mah

England, in 1945. Just after World War II, when colonies throughout

Africa were seeking independence, Nkrumah, who would become the first prime minister of the newly independent nation of Ghana in 1957, was the first African to lead the Pan-African movement. He

envisioned a United States of Africa, which would unite the continent and welcome back Africans from the diaspora. Although his dream soon gave way to the more powerful forces of tribalism and nationalism in Africa, it had in a small way a symbolic realization when in 1961 Du Bois emigrated to Ghana. THE HARLEM

RENAISSANCE

Although Garvey’s movement failed to populate Africa with black Americans, its energy, broad appeal, and positive view of Africa contributed to a cultural awakening in the States that in the arts became known as the Harlem Renaissance. Led by writers, artists, and musithis cians, many from the Caribbean and the American South,

affirmamovement that began in the 1920s was characterized by an

traditions, and tion of blackness, a celebration of African culture and

ists of a search for an African heritage. Like the Romantic national Renaissance nineteenth-century Europe, the writers of the Harlem

culture. collected their people’s folklore and celebrated their own

1697

1698

IN THE WORLD:

For | was born, far from my native clime,

/ Under the white man’s menace, out

oftime. — CLauDE McKay, “Outcast” Pp. 1705, 1706 Pp. 1708, 1707

IMAGES OF AFRICA

the songs of the slaves— Du Bois wrote about the sorrow songs— in The Souls of Black Folk, and James Weldon Johnson put together what is now the standard collection of Negro spirituals, songs that in his poem “O Black and Unknown Bards” Johnson traces to Africa. Claude McKay, a Jamaican emigrant to Harlem, turned conventional connotations of “black” and “white” on their heads and celebrated blackness in such poems as “To the White Fiends” and “Outcast.” Countee Cullen’s “Heritage” and Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” imagine a romantic Africa. Inspired in part by the writers of the Iris Lrrerary RENAISSANCE, these poets implicitly compared their situation to that of the Irish, and like the mythic

Ireland celebrated by Yeats and his fellow Irish poets, similarly looked to the past, to a time before slavery and the ravages of colonial oppression. Although none of the Harlem writers of the twenties and thirties except Du Bois actually emigrated to Africa, they made it into an “imaginary homeland” as well as a destination for the many artists, writers, and civil rights activists who traveled to Africa or settled there in the later years of the century. NEGRITUDE

In the influential novel Banjo (1929), Claude McKay’s hero advises a skeptical black student to read the writers of the Irish Renaissance: “If you were sincere in your feelings about racial advancement,” he says, “you would turn for example to whites of a different type. You would study the Irish cultural and social movement.” The Irish writers had turned to Celtic mythology and Irish history as sources of ethnic identity and used their writing to promote Irish independence from British colonialism. The Harlem artists were also devoted to the cause of liberation. When blacks from the French colonies looked for writers to emulate, they discovered the Parisian avantgarde, particularly the SurrEaLIsTs, and the writers of the Harlem

lay-oh-POH LD say-DAR sawng-GORE;

eh-MAY seh-ZAR

Renaissance, most notably Claude McKay. The founders of the NEGRITUDE movement in Paris in the early thirties, three students from French colonies in Africa and the Caribbean— Léopold Sédar Senghor (p. 1711) from Senegal, Aimé Césaire (p. 1714) from Mar-

tinique, and Léon Damas from French Guiana— set out with aims similar to those of the Harlem group. Senghor characterized McKay as their spiritual mentor, “the true inventor of Négritude,” he wrote.

Introduction

“I speak not of the word, but of the values of Négritude. . . . Far from seeing in one’s blackness an inferiority, one accepts it, one lays claim to it with pride, one cultivates it, lovingly.’ Senghor expressed this acceptance in poems like “Black Woman,” which metaphori-

p. 1712

cally celebrates Africa, and “Prayer to the Masks,” an evocation of

plZl3

Senghor’s African heritage. In Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, one of the most important works of French SURREALISM, Césaire returns to Martinique to confront its poverty, suffering, and history

1699

P- 1715

of slavery; by the end of the poem, in the sections presented below,

he has come to accept his homeland in all its pain and suffering. Describing Négritude poetry as “in our time, the only great revolutionary poetry, French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), in the influential essay “Black Orpheus,” catalogs the themes of the poems as “exile, slavery, the Africa-Europe couple and the great . . . division of the world into black and white.” He describes the map of the world imagined by the Négritude poets as

What would you

composed of three circles whose centers overlap:

expect to find, when the muzzle that has

_.. in the foreground—forming the first of three concentric circles extends the land of exile, colorless Europe; then comes the dazzling circle of the Islands and of childhood; . . . the last circle is Africa, burnt, oily like a snake’s skin, flickering like a flame, between being and nothingness, more real than the “eternal boulevards with cops” but absent, beyond attainment, disintegrating Europe with its black but invisible rays: Africa, an imaginary continent.

silenced the voices of black men is removed? That they

would thunder your praise? ... For the

white man has enjoyed for three

thousand years the

Sartre saw self-conscious absorption in blackness as a stage in a dialectical process—a process of change involving a thing and its —that would eventually bring about a society that tranopposite scends racial categories. Although Senghor described Négritude as izes, an evolutionary dynamic, his categories seem fixed. He character

for example, the African personality type as emotional, intuitive,

al, and physical, and creative, and the European as rational, mechanic Hellenic.” For mental. “Emotion is black,” he asserted, “as Reason is

one who such delineations he has been criticized as an “essentialist,” racism while adopts the categories of nineteenth-century European e, rejecting their valuation. Césaire, who coined the term Négritud e has a seems to have the more evolutionary notion: “My Négritud

It is hisground,” he wrote. “It is a fact that there is a black culture: ing Négritude torical, there is nothing biological about it.” By recogniz

privilege of seeing without being seen. It

was a seeing pure and uncomplicated; the light of his eyes

drew all things from their primeval darkness... . Today these black men have fixed their gaze upon

us and our gaze is thrown back in our eyes. .. . black torches, in their turn,

light the world. — JEAN-Paut SARTRE

1700

IN THE WORLD:

Since our past has

been vilified by imperialism, and since an imperialist education

has tried to equip us

IMAGES OF AFRICA

as part of a historical process and not an essential category, Césaire can choose to change history; in the existential moment of his return to Martinique, he can choose to transform suffering into

celebration.

with all manner of

absurd views and reactions to our past,

we need to reclaim

and rehabilitate our genuine past, to

repossess our true and entire history in

order to acquire a

secure launching pad into our future. — CHINWEIZU ET AL.

POSTCOLONIAL AFRICA

As African nations achieved political independence after World War II, there was great ambivalence regarding how much of the colonial past had to be given up in order to reach a collective psychic independence. Many Africans hoped to retain the benefits of Western culture while others argued that all traces of European influence had to be eradicated. For writers, that could mean rejecting the language in which they were educated and the language in which they wrote. Many Africans have found fault with the Pan-African and Négritude movements. Since both were led by blacks in the diaspora, they appeared to some as a black imperialism that would simply replace white imperialism and continue to direct the course of Africa from outside the continent. Furthermore, in the postwar struggles for independence, many former colonies in Africa were more con-

cerned with their national identity than with their “pan-African” connections to other nations. Négritude was criticized for its unrealistic romanticism, its failure to acknowledge the inequities and injustices within many African societies. During the second half of the twentieth century, many African American writers made pilgrimages to decolonized Africa and con-

tinued to celebrate the dream of return, albeit with a more realistic view of the continent’s difficulties. James Baldwin was prompted to skepticism, however. Already a resident of North Africa for some time,

he attended the Conference of Black Writers held in Paris in 1956 at

which Senghor called for black authors worldwide to celebrate their common culture. Baldwin asked what, beyond suffering, all blacks

had in common and doubted that the African elements in his own heritage were more important than the American ones. Although some African American writers— Alice Walker, for example, in The

Color Purple (1982) — continued to see a return to Africa as a utopian

project, others recognized its difficulties and believed the real journey p. 1720

called for looking within. Gwendolyn Brooks, after visiting Africa,

acknowledged that the “Afrika” she sought was herself and that the continent she visited had much “work . . . to be done.”

Introduction

1701

|

Twentieth-Century Europe: The Congress of Black

Writers

After World War Il, the movements to secure

independence from their European colonizers spread throughout the colonial countries of Asia and Africa. At an important conference held in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia,

several newly independent nations of Africa and, especially, southeast Asia met to

establish economic and cultural ties and to oppose the colonialism of both sides in the cold war—the West and the Soviet Union. This group of nonaligned nations, including Egypt, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, condemned “colonialism in all

its manifestations” and came to be known as the “Third World.” A year later, at the Sorbonne in Paris on September 19, 1956, a meeting inspired by

the Asian-dominated Bandung Conference, convened to address the situation of black writers and artists — most of them from still-colonized countries in Africa and the Caribbean. The organizer of the conference, Senegalese writer and publisher Alioune

Diop, editor of the influential journal of black writing Présence Africaine, brought together artists, writers, and intellectuals from many countries, particularly from the French colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. Those who attended included Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Frantz Fanon

from the Francophone culture. The most prominent English-speaking writers who attended were George Lamming, the Barbadian novelist who had published In the Castle of My Skin (1953), and American novelist Richard Wright, author of Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), who had taken up residence in France after the war. Pablo Picasso contributed a drawing for the

poster announcing the event.

Opening ceremony of the Congress of Black Writers and Artists, 1956 Included on the panel are Richard Wright (second from left), Alioune Diop (standing),

and Aimé Césaire (third from right). (© Roger-Viollet/ The Image Works)

The American delegation to the conference, composed of academics and intellectuals, was marginalized by its noncolonial, English-speaking status, and by the absence of W. E. B. Du Bois, who in the wake of

McCarthyism and the cold war, was denied a passport by the U.S. State Department. In a letter to the conference, Du Bois explained

his absence: “Any Negro-American who travels abroad today must either not discuss race conditions in the United States or say the sort of thing which our State Department wishes the world to believe. . . . It would be a fatal mistake if new Africa becomes the tool and cat’s paw of the colonial powers and allows the vast power of the United States to mislead it into investment and labor. | trust the black exploitation of

1702

IMAGES OF AFRICA at

TIME

AND

PLACE

Twentieth-Century Europe: The Congress of Black Writers continued writers of the world will understand this and will set themselves to lead Africa toward the light and not backward toward a new colonialism where hand in hand with Britain, France, and the United States, black capital

enslaves black labor again.” Du Bois’s condemnation of colonialism was echoed in much harsher terms by many participants at the conference. Aimé Césaire moved the meeting to several spontaneous acclamations with his assertion that Europeans ruthlessly destroyed the languages, customs, tribes,

and lives of the Africans and replaced them with nothing, intending to keep them ina state of subject barbarism. American writer James Baldwin, covering the conference as a journalist, reflected the ambivalence of many American blacks who considered their culture more American than African. To Baldwin, the central issue

of the meeting seemed to be whether there was a single black culture that linked African Americans with blacks from the colonies in Africa and elsewhere. “What, beyond the fact that all black men at one time or another left Africa, or have remained there,”

he asked, “do they really have in common?” He challenged Senghor’s appropriation of Richard Wright’s autobiography as an example of African literature. “Black Boy is

the study of the growing up of a Negro boy in the Deep South,” he asserted, “and is one

of the major American autobiographies.” For African American writers this issue — whether there is a single black culture—has remained a troubling concern, described early in the century by Du Bois as reconciling the “two warring ideals within one dark body”: the American and the Negro. On September 19, 2006, a conference at

the Sorbonne, organized by UNESCO and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard,

commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the “important moment of history” in 1956. In his speech to the meeting, Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka celebrated the goal of the earlier conference, which sought “to demolish the doctrines on which the mission of colonialism was raised, and challenge the scripture — both religious and philosophical— on whose authority the inhuman commerce in black flesh—Arab and European—had been justified.” But, he went on to point out, those goals had not been achieved, for the genocide in Darfur, propagated with the collusion of the nations of the Western and the Islamic worlds, revealed just how much was left to be done.

@ PRONUNCIATION Aimé Césaire: eh-MAY seh-ZAR W.E. B. Du Bois: doo-BOYZ

Kwame Nkrumah: KWAH-may en-KROO-mah Léopold Sédar Senghor: lay-oh-POHLD say-DAR sawng-GORE

Cw

W.E. B. Du Bois B. UNITED STATES, 1868-1963

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he was brought up to love liberty and democracy and was not subjected to racial discrimination. In 1885 he traveled to Fisk University, a black college in Nashville, where he encountered a world sharply divided between black and white. Returning to New England for graduate studies at Harvard University, he majored in philosophy and history and wrote a celebrated dissertation, “The Suppression of the Slave Trade in the United States of America,” in 1896. He became, in the words

of African American studies professor Cornel West, the greatest “American intellectual of African descent . . . produced in this country.’ Du Bois

taught at several universities, including Wilberforce and the University of

W. E. B. Du Bois

ored People (NAACP), an organization he helped to found. Among his

Schomburg Center for

Pennsylvania, and he served for many years as the Director of Publicity and Research for the National Association for the Advancement of Col-

(P hotographs and Prints Division,

many important books are The Philadelphia Negro (1899), The Souls of Black Folk (1903), John Brown (1909), Black Reconstruction (1935), and

Research in Black Culture, Ne?

(1940). In 1961 he moved to Ghana and became a citizen two years later, the year he died.

Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations)

Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept

York Public Library,

In the following selection from The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois ana-

lyzes the African American's “double-consciousness” —the apparently irreconcilable duality of being both American and black in which many African Americans are compelled to live.

Qe

The Souls of Black Folk FROM CHAPTER 1 Or Our SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS

the Teuton and Mongolian, After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman,

gifted with second-sight in the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and but ness, —a world which yields him no true self-conscious this American world,

other world. It is a peculiar only lets him see himself through the revelation of the always looking at one’s self sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of by the tape of a world that looks through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul a his two-ness, —an American, on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels strivings; two warring ideals in Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled it from being torn asunder. one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps

1703

1704

IN THE WORLD:

IMAGES OF AFRICA

The history of the American Negro is the history ofthis strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He

would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of cul-

ture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and

doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness, —it is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan—on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde— could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black

savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the

white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was

the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves. . . .

Qe

CLAUDE McKay B. JAMAICA, 1889-1948

Claude McKay began writing poems in Caribbean dialect while still a child. Recognized by the Jamaican Institute of Arts and Sciences for two

volumes of poetry he published in 1912, McKay was awarded a scholarship to study in the United States. After two years of studying agriculture at Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University, McKay went to New York, where he became a writer and editor for radical journals. His most important collection of poems, Harlem Shadows (1922), was published at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. His short and very intense lyric poetry is technically conservative, following English literary forms, but politically radical: McKay was the most militant writer of the Harlem Renaissance. McKay left New York in 1923, living abroad in France, Britain, and

North Africa, where he published several novels including Home to Harlem (1928) and Banjo (1929). In identifying McKay as the spiritual founder of the Négritude movement, Léopold Senghor said,

Claude McKay can rightfully be considered the true inventor of Négritude. I speak not of the word, but of the values of Négritude....Far from seeing in one’s blackness an inferiority, one accepts it, one lays claim to it with pride, one cultivates it lovingly. McKay’s novel Banjo was particularly influential for the Négritude writ-

ers, who responded to its frank and affirmative treatment of blackness.

Ax

James L. Allen,

Claude McKay

McKay wrote novels and short stories as

well as poetry. (Photographs and Print Division,

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New

York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations)

To the White Fiends Think you I am not fiend and savage too! Think you I could not arm me with a gun And shoot down ten of you for every one Of my black brothers murdered, burnt by you? Be not deceived, for every deed you do

tch: am I not Afric’s son, h — out-ma I could matc

10

Black of that black land where black deeds are done? But the Almighty from the darkness drew My soul and said: Even thou shalt be a light Awhile to burn on the benighted earth, Thy dusky face I set among the white For thee to prove thyself of higher worth; Before the world is swallowed up in night, To show thy little lamp: go forth, go forth! 1705

1706

IN THE WORLD:

Cw

IMAGES OF AFRICA

Outcast For the dim regions whence my fathers came My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs. Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;

My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs. I would go back to darkness and to peace, But the great western world holds me in fee, And I may never hope for full release While to its alien gods I bend my knee. Something in me is lost, forever lost, Some vital thing has gone out of my heart, And I must walk the way of life a ghost Among the sons of earth, a thing apart. For I was born, far from my native clime, Under the white man’s menace, out of time.

LANGSTON HUGHES B. UNITED STATES,

1902-1967

Langston Hughes was born and raised in the Midwest, influenced by such writers as Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Carl Sandburg. After attending Columbia University briefly in 1922, he left school and worked his way across the Atlantic to Europe and Africa on a freighter. His first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1925), reveals his fascination with jazz and the blues as well as the spirituals of his youth. Besides twelve volumes of poetry, Hughes wrote novels, plays, essays, and historical works. He is perhaps best known for his short stories, many of which are included ina late collection, I Wonder as I Wander (1956). Known for his generosity and

his support of many younger writers, Hughes defended the right of young black authors “to express our dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.” An early star of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes dedicated “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” to W. E. B. Du Bois. In that poem Hughes traces his heritage by associating the Mississippi, the river near his childhood home in St. Louis, with rivers in Africa and the Middle East.

Hughes: The Negro Speaks of Rivers William H. Johnson, Jitterbugs, 1940-45. Oil on plywood

Johnson, a painter during the Harlem Renaissance, was

known for his renderings of black New York nightlife.

Jazz figured greatly in his work, as it did in the poetry of his friend Langston Hughes. (Smithsonian

American Art Museum, Washington, DC / Art Resource, NY)

Gx

The Negro Speaks of Rivers I’ve known rivers: the flow of human Pve known rivers ancient as the world and older than blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers. . I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young sleep. to me I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled it. above ids pyram [looked upon the Nile’ and raised the Lincoln went down to New [heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe golden in the sunset. Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. 10

My soul has grown deep like the rivers. t-day

n, from presen flows through the ancient kingdom of Babylo ‘Euphrates . . . Nile: The Euphrates River Africa into the central in Congo of ic Republ the h throug gh Syria and iraq; the Congo flows

Turkey throu rs’ note.] Egypt into the Mediterranean Sea. [Edito Atlantic Ocean; the Nile runs through

1707

Ow

COUNTEE CULLEN B. UNITED STATES, 1903-1946

Yet do | marvel at this curious thing: / To make a poet black, and bid him sing! — COUNTEE CULLEN

Ow

Countee Cullen, the adopted son of a Methodist minister living in New York, earned a B.A. at New York University and an M.A. at Harvard before returning to teach school in New York City. As with many writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Cullen’s first collection of poems, reflecting the energies of the group, was his strongest. After Color was published in 1925, Cullen served as the editor of the important black magazine Opportunity, and his poems appeared in many periodicals. Like the work of Claude McKay, Cullen’s verse is formally traditional but at the same time intense and political.

Heritage For Harold Jackman

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang? One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved,

Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me? So I lie, who all day long

Want no sound except the song Sung by wild barbaric birds Goading massive jungle herds, Juggernauts of flesh that pass Trampling tall defiant grass Where young forest lovers lie, Plighting troth beneath the sky. So I lie, who always hear, 20

Though I cram against my ear Both my thumbs, and keep them there,

Great drums throbbing through the air. So I lie, whose fount of pride,

1708

Cullen: Heritage

Dear distress, and joy allied. Is my somber flesh and skin, With the dark blood dammed within Like great pulsing tides of wine That, I fear, must burst the fine

Channels of the chafing net Where they surge and foam and fret. Africa? A book one thumbs

30

Listlessly, till stumber comes.

Unremembered are her bats Circling through the night, her cats Crouching in the river reeds,

40

SO

Stalking gentle flesh that feeds By the river brink; no more Does the bugle-throated roar Cry that monarch claws have leapt From the scabbards where they slept. Silver snakes that once a year Doff the lovely coats you wear, Seek no covert in your fear Lest a mortal eye should see; What’s your nakedness to me? Here no leprous flowers rear Fierce corollas in the air; Here no bodies sleek and wet, Dripping mingled rain and sweat, Tread the savage measures of Jungle boys and girls in love. What is last year’s snow to me,

Last year’s anything? The tree Budding yearly must forget How its past arose or set—

Bough and blossom, flower, fruit,

Even what shy bird with mute

Wonder at her travail there, 60

Meekly labored in its hair. One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me? So I lie, who find no peace Night or day, no slight release From the unremittant beat

Made by cruel padded feet

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Walking through my body’s street. Up and down they go, and back,

70

Treading out a jungle track. So I lie, who never quite Safely sleep from rain at night— I can never rest at all When the rain begins to fall; Like a soul gone mad with pain I must match its weird refrain; Ever must I twist and squirm, Writhing like a baited worm,

80

While its primal measures drip Through my body, crying, “Strip! Doff this new exuberance. Come and dance the Lover’s Dance!” In an old remembered way Rain works on me night and day. Quaint, outlandish heathen gods Black men fashion out of rods, Clay, and brittle bits of stone, In a likeness like their own,

My conversion came high-priced; 90

I belong to Jesus Christ, Preacher of humility,

Heathen gods are naught to me. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, So I make an idle boast; Jesus of the twice-turned cheek,

Lamb of God, although I speak With my mouth thus, in my heart Do I play a double part. Ever at Thy glowing altar 100

Must my heart grow sick and falter,

Wishing He I served were black, Thinking then it would not lack Precedent of pain to guide it, Let who would or might deride it; Surely then this flesh would know Yours had borne a kindred woe. Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,

Daring even to give You

Dark despairing features where, 110

Crowned with dark rebellious hair,

Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1906-2001

171

Patience wavers just so much as Mortal grief compels, while touches Quick and hot, of anger, rise

To smitten cheek and weary eyes. Lord, forgive me if my need Sometimes shapes a human creed. All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood, Lest a hidden ember set Timber that I thought was wet Burning like the dryest flax, Melting like the merest wax, Lest the grave restore its dead. Not yet has my heart or head In the least way realized They and I are civilized.

120

Cw

LEOPOLD

SEDAR SENGHOR

B. SENEGAL, 1906-2001 t, was Léopold Sédar Senghor, the son of a wealthy Catholic merchan . As a Senegal in town port Muslim y inantl born in 1906 in Joal, a predom

Quite simply, négritude is the sum total of

his educaintroduction to European culture. Eventually, he completed

lization of the African

on as well as a formal child, Senghor received a traditional African educati

the Sorbonne. In Paris tion, first at the Lycée Louis le Grand and later at

and Caribbean Senghor joined with other French-speaking African

Martinique, to lay the writers, including Aimé Césaire (b. 1913) from

Négritude movement. foundations of what would become known as the ed Black Student found Damas Together Senghor, Césaire, and Léon and celebrating race of ons questi ing (LEudiant noir), a journal explor ’s degree from master a of lent equiva the ing obtain African culture. After

aire, Senghor went on to the Sorbonne in 1932 with a thesis on Baudel ship

agrégation, a fellow become the first African to receive the prestigious to become a French had he which for advanced study in France, for citizen. by World War II; he Senghor’s teaching career was interrupted the Germans in 1940. by red fought on the northern front and was captu poems that would the of many wrote While in the prison camps, Senghor and Black Hosts 1945) re, d@omb ts (Chan later appear in Shadow Songs Senghor returned to teaching (Hosties notres, 1948). Released in 1942,

the values of the civi-

world

LY pasoke Senn SENGHOR, Pierre

Teilhard de Chardin et

la Politique Africaine, 1962

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and in 1944 became the Professor of African Languages at the Ecole Nationale de la France d Outre Mer (National School of the Overseas

French Territories). After the war Senghor entered a new phase of his career, publishing Chants d’ombre and being elected to the French Constituent Assembly as a deputy for Senegal. Starting in his student years, Senghor wrote for and organized the then-burgeoning Négritude movement. In addition to founding the short-lived journal L’Etudiant noir, Senghor helped to found two other journals, The Human

Condition (Condition humaine) and African Pres-

ence (Présence Africaine). Throughout his career, Senghor’s writings celebrated Africa’s cultural heritage and attempted to promote a new view of African culture and society. In 1948, the year he published his second collection of poetry, Hosties noires, Senghor also published Anthology of the New Black and Madagascan Poetry (Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie négre et malgache) with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’s introduction to the groundbreaking work that brought together works of French-speaking black writers articulated for the first time the constituent features of Négritude and its historical and cultural importance. Songs for Naett (Chants pour Naétt), Senghor’s third volume of poetry, appeared in 1949; his next book of poems, Ethiopiques, would not appear until 1960, as he devoted much time and energy to politics. In the forties and fifties, Senghor founded several political parties and sat on various political committees. Representing the interests of Senegal in particular and French Africa in general, Senghor attempted to reshape the relationship between France and its colonies into one of an equal balance of power. After Senegal finally won its independence in 1960, Senghor was elected president of that nation, holding the position until 1981 when he retired.

Cw

Black Woman Translated by Melvin Dixon

Naked woman, black woman

Dressed in your color’ that is life, in your form that is beauty! I grew up in your shadow. The softness of your hands . Shielded my eyes, and now at the height of Summer and Noon, From the crest of a charred hilltop I discover you, Promised Land? And your beauty strikes my heart like an eagle’s lightning flash.

‘your color: Both the green of the African landscape and the black of the woman’s skin. * Promised Land: An allusion to the land promised to the exiled Israelites in the Book of Exodus.

Senghor: Prayer to the Masks Naked woman, dark woman

Ripe fruit with firm flesh, dark raptures of black wine, Mouth that gives music to my mouth Savanna of clear horizons, savanna quivering to the fervent caress Of the the East Wind,’ sculptured tom-tom, stretched drumskin

Moaning under the hands of the conqueror Your deep contralto voice is the spiritual song of the Beloved. Naked woman, dark woman

20

Oil no breeze can ripple, oil soothing the thighs Of athletes and the thighs of the princes of Mali Gazelle with celestial limbs, pearls are stars Upon the night of your skin. Delight of the mind’s riddles, The reflections of red gold from your shimmering skin In the shade of your hair, my despair Lightens in the close suns of your eyes.

Naked woman, black woman I sing your passing beauty and fix it for all Eternity before jealous Fate reduces you to ashes to nourish the roots of life. November and April from the Sahara 3 East Wind: The Hamattan, a wind that blows across Senegal between Desert to the northeast. kingdom of Mali. 4 Mali: African nation east of Senegal that has roots in the ancient African

Qw

Prayer to the Masks Translated by Melvin Dixon

Masks!’ O Masks!

masks Black mask, red mask, you white-and-black

blows Masks of the four cardinal points where the Spirit I greet you in silence!

the lion head.’ And you, not the least of all, Ancestor with

You keep this place safe from women’s laughter And any wry, profane smiles e You exude the immortal air where I inhal

of ancestors who sacred place and believed to contain the spirits 1Masks!: African ancestral masks, kept in a provide protection for the living. family. , of the Senghor is the totem animal, the symbolic emblem 2 Ancestor with the lion head: The lion

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The breath of my Fathers. 10 Masks with faces without masks, stripped of every dimple And every wrinkle You created this portrait, my face leaning On an altar of blank paper And in your image, listen to me! The Africa of empires is dying —it is the agony Of a sorrowful princess And Europe, too, tied to us at the navel. Fix your steady eyes on your oppressed children Who give their lives like the poor man his last garment. 20 Let us answer “present” at the rebirth of the World As white flour cannot rise without the leaven. Who else will teach rhythm to the world Deadened by machines and cannons? Who will sound the shout of joy at daybreak to wake orphans and the dead? Tell me, who will bring back the memory of life To the man of gutted hopes? They call us men of cotton, coffee, and oil

They call us men of death. But we are men of dance, whose feet get stronger 30 As we pound upon firm ground.

OW

AIME CESAIRE B. MARTINIQUE, 1913—2008

| say right on! The old negritude/ pro-

gressively cadavers itself /the horizon breaks, recoils and

expands / and through the shred-

ding ofclouds the flashing of a sign / the slave ship cracks

everywhere . . . — Aime CESAIRE,

Norebeok ofg Gatien

to the Native Land

Poet, playwright, and politician from the island of Martinique in the French Caribbean, Césaire brings a MODERNIST perspective to bear on the themes of decolonization, Western racism, and négritude. Educated in France in the 1930s, Césaire was influenced by the French modernists,

particularly André Breton and the surreatists. In Paris he also met Léopold Sédar Senghor from Senegal and Léon Gotran Damas from Guiana; together they founded the NeGriruDE movement, which sought to counter European racism with positive meanings for blackness. After World War II Césaire was elected mayor of Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, and deputy to the French Assembly, in which role he fought for anticolonialist causes until he retired from politics in 1993. Césaire’s long poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, 1939; English translation, 1947) became the manifesto and mas-

terwork of the Négritude movement. It is also one of the most important

works of French surrealism. The selection presented here is taken from the end of the poem where Césaire accepts and celebrates his race, his

Césaire: Notebook of aReturn to the Native Land

heritage, and his identity. Earlier in the poem, he has cataloged the poverty and misery of his native land, the cruelty and brutality of slavery, and the debased sense of self that he and his countrymen have adopted. All notes are the editors’ unless otherwise marked.

FROM

Ax

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land Translated by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith

And my special geography too; the world map made for my own use, not tinted I with the arbitrary colors of scholars, but with the geometry of my spilled blood, a to angle, accept both the determination of my biology, not a prisoner to a facial type of hair, to a well-flattened nose, to a clearly Melanian coloring, and negritude, of no longer a cephalic index, or plasma, or soma, but measured by the compass suffering and the Negro every day more base, more cowardly, more sterile, less profound, with himself, more spilled out of himself, more separated from himself, more wily less immediate to himself, Laccept, I accept it all

syzygy’ of blisters, and far from the palatial sea that foams beneath the suppurating my country, its bones miraculously lying in the despair of my arms the body of of vegetal milk at the shocked and, in its veins, the blood hesitating like a drop injured point of the bulb...

and the water of life Suddenly now strength and life assail me like a bull and veinlets are bustling overwhelms the papilla’ of the morne, now all the veins of cyclones and the fire hoarded with new blood and the enormous breathing lung now beats the measure of a living in volcanoes and the gigantic seismic pulse which body in my firm conflagration. in the wind, my hand puny in its And we are standing now, my country and I, hair us but above us, in a voice that drills enormous fist and now the strength is not in of an apocalyptic wasp. And the voice the night and the hearing like the penetrance

' suppurating syzygy: The festering tides.

? papilla: Nipple.

Ch. 5-1. ed by the Israelites in Egypt. See Exodus, 3 apocalyptic wasp: Like the plagues suffer

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proclaims that for centuries Europe has force-fed us with lies and bloated us with pestilence,

for it is not true that the work of man is done that we have no business being on earth that we parasite the world that it is enough for us to heel to the world where the work has only begun and man still must overcome all the interdictions wedged in the recesses of his fervor and no race has a monopoly on beauty, on intelligence, on strength and there is room for everyone at the convocation of conquest and we know now that the sun turns around our earth lighting the parcel designated by our will alone and that every star falls from sky to earth at our omnipotent command. I now see the meaning of this trial by the sword: my country is the “lance of night” of my Bambara’ ancestors. It shrivels and its point desperately retreats toward the haft when it is sprinkled with chicken blood and it says that its nature requires the blood of man, his fat, his liver, his heart, not chicken blood. And I seek for my country not date hearts, but men’s hearts which, in order to

enter the silver cities through the great trapezoidal gate, beat with warrior blood, and as my eyes sweep my kilometers of paternal earth I number its sores almost joyfully and I pile one on top of the other like rare species, and my total is ever lengthened by unexpected mintings of baseness.

And there are those who will never get over not being made in the likeness of God but of the devil, those who believe that being a nigger is like being a second-class clerk; waiting for a better deal and upward mobility; those who beat the drum of compromise in front of themselves, those who live in their own dungeon pit; those who drape themselves in proud pseudomorphosis;’ those who say to Europe: “You see, I can bow and scrape, like you I pay my respects, in short, I am no different from you; pay no attention to my black skin: the sun did it.” And there is the nigger pimp, the nigger askari,° and all the zebras shaking themselves in various ways to get rid of their stripes in a dew of fresh milk. And in the midst of all that I say right on! my grandfather dies, I say right on! the old negritude progressively cadavers itself.

“Bambara: An ethnic group in Mali. The ritual referred to is one in which human blood is sprinkled on spears to make them effective. * pseudomorphosis: A false personality. ®askari: The Swahili term in East Africa for African colonial soldiers.

Césaire: Notebook ofaReturn to the Native Land

No question about it: he was a good nigger. The Whites say he was a good nigger, a really good nigger, massa’s good ole darky. I say right on! He was a good nigger, indeed, poverty had wounded his chest and back and they had stuffed into his poor brain that a fatality impossible to trap weighed on him; that he had no control over his own fate; that an evil Lord had for all eternity inscribed Thou Shall Not in his pelvic constitution; that he must be a good nigger; must sincerely believe in his worthlessness, without any perverse curiosity to check out the fatidic hieroglyphs.

He was a very good nigger and it never occurred to him that he could hoe, burrow, cut anything, anything else really than insipid cane He was a very good nigger. neither these And they threw stones at him, bits of scrap iron, broken bottles, but

on this stones, nor this scrap iron, nor these bottles . .. O peaceful years of God terraqueous clod!

dew of our and the whip argued with the bombilation’ of the flies over the sugary sores.

I say right on! The old negritude progressively cadavers itself the horizon breaks, recoils and expands and through the shredding of clouds the flashing of a sign and resounds . . . The the slave ship cracks everywhere . . . Its belly convulses the strange suckling of the sea! ghastly tapeworm of its cargo gnaws the fetid guts of

d with doubloons, nor the tricks And neither the joy of sails filled like a pocket stuffe of order® prevent it from hearing played on the dangerous stupidity of the frigates the threat of its intestinal rumblings

t loudmouth nigger from the In vain to ignore them the captain hangs the bigges him to his mastiffs main yard or throws him into the sea, or feeds

covers the bitter taste of freedom in its Reeking of fried onions the nigger scum redis spilled blood

7 bombilation: Swarming.

slavery. England to enforce Britain’s abolition of 8 frigates of order: Ships sent out from

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And the nigger scum is on its feet the seated nigger scum unexpectedly standing standing in the hold standing in the cabins standing on deck standing in the wind standing under the sun standing in the blood standing and free standing and no longer a poor madwoman in her maritime freedom and destitution gyrating in perfect drift’ and there she is: most unexpectedly standing standing in the rigging standing at the tiller standing at the compass standing at the map standing under the stars standing and free and the lustral'’ ship fearlessly advances on the crumbling water. And now our ignominious plops are rotting away! by the clanking noon sea

by the burgeoning midnight sun listen sparrow hawk who holds the keys to the orient by the disarmed day by the stony spurt of the rain listen dogfish that watches over the occident listen white dog of the north, black serpent of the south that cinches the sky girdle There still remains one sea to cross oh still one sea to cross

that I may invent my lungs

* drift: An allusion to the Ship of Fools on which the insane were put out to sea and set adrift. Here the slave ship is adrift after the slaves have taken it over.

‘lustral: Purifying. By revolting the slaves are purified.

Césaire: Notebook ofaReturn to the Native Land

that the prince may hold his tongue that the queen may lay me still one old man to murder one madman to deliver that my soul may shine bark shine bark bark bark

and the owl!’ my beautiful inquisitive angel may hoot.

The The The The

master of laughter? master of ominous silence? master of hope and despair? master of laziness? Master of the dance? It is I! and for this reason, Lord, the frail-necked men

receive and perceive deadly triangular calm” Rally to my side my dances you bad nigger dances the carcan-cracker dance’ the prison-break dance the it-is-beautiful-good-and-legitimate-to-be-a-nigger-dance of my hands Rally to my side my dances and let the sun bounce on the racket but no the unequal sun is not enough for me coil, wind, around my new growth light on my cadenced fingers m to you I surrender my conscience and its fleshy rhyth rs smolde ess weakn my to you I surrender the fire in which to you I surrender the “chain-gang” to you the swamps to you the nontourist of the triangular circuit

devour wind to you I surrender devour and encoil and self-encoiling embrace me unto

my abrupt words yourself embrace me with a more ample shudder furious us

embrace, embrace US

but after having drawn from us blood drawn by our own blood! 1 the owl: Césaire’s guardian angel.

between Europe, Africa, and the triangular slave trade— operating triangular calm: Césaire associates e. triangl a by ented repres y ionall tradit with the Christian Holy Trinity, America— dance was a fixed around the necks of slaves, and this cker dance: The carcan was an iron collar n-cra 13 carca dance of freedom.

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embrace, my purity mingles only with yours so then embrace

like a field of even filagos”* at dusk

our multicolored purities and bind, bind me without remorse bind me with your vast arms to the luminous clay bind my black vibration to the very navel of the world bind, bind me, bitter brotherhood

then, strangling me with your lasso of stars rise,

Dove” rise rise rise

I follow you who are imprinted on my ancestral white cornea. rise sky licker and the great black hole where a moon ago I wanted to drown it is there I will now

fish the malevolent tongue of the night in its motionless veerition!'® “filagos: Casuarina trees.

'S Dove: The Christian symbol of the Pentecost. » 16 Veerition: Coined from the Latin verb verri, meaning “to sweep, to scrape a surface,” and ultimately “to scan.” (Translators’ note.)

Qe

GWENDOLYN

BROOKS

B. UNITED STATES, 1917—2000 You did not know the Black continent / that had to be

reached / was you. — GWENDOLYN

Brooks, “To the

Diaspora”

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Kansas but is identified with Chicago, the city where she grew up and whose Negro ghetto, Bronzeville, is the subject of many of her poems. She began writing early and was a regular contributor to the black Chicago newspaper The Defender by the time she was sixteen. Brooks was inspired by the work of Langston Hughes, whom she met at church and who became a friend and mentor. Her work mixes the language of black preachers with street talk and draws on the rhythms of jazz and the blues to describe the everyday life of blacks. Many of her finest early poems are verbal portraits of the inhabitants of “Bronzeville.” After attending the Second Black Writers’ Conference at Fisk University in 1967, Brooks adopted a more activist voice and, addressing her poems to a black audience, wrote about the issues raised by the civil rights move-

ment and the Black Nationalists. She traveled to Africa in 1971 and 1974.

Among her many books of poetry are A Street in Bronzeville (1945), Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956), and Blacks (1987).

Brooks: To the Diaspora

To the Diaspora’ you did not know you were Afrika

When you set out for Afrika you did not know you were going. Because

you You that was

did not know you were Afrika. did not know the Black continent had to be reached you.

I could not have told you then that some sun would come, somewhere over the road,

would come evoking the diamonds of you, the Black continent— somewhere over the road. You would not have believed my mouth.

When I told you, meeting you somewhere close to the heat and youth of the road,

liking my loyalty, liking belief, me. you smiled and you thanked me but very little believed

20

Here is some sun. Some. Now off into the places rough to reach. le, Though dry, though drowsy, all unwillingly a-wobb into the dissonant and dangerous crescendo.

to be done. Your work, that was done, to be done to be done

of Africa. native land; here, specifically, Africans living outside ‘Diaspora: A dispersion of people from their [Editors’ note.|

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CHINUA ACHEBE B. NIGERIA, 1930 In the following transcript of a lecture delivered at the University of Massachusetts in February 1975, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe challenges

the status of Heart of Darkness (p. 1159) as one of the great books of Western literature. Conrad’s novel, Achebe argues, does not treat its African characters as fully human. Achebe’s own novel Things Fall Apart can be read as a response to Conrad’s story. (For more on Chinua Achebe and the text of Things Fall Apart, see p. 1597.)

All notes are the editors’ unless otherwise indicated.

Gwe

An Image of Africa

It was a fine autumn morning at the beginning of this academic year such as encouraged friendliness to passing strangers. Brisk youngsters were hurrying in all directions, many of them obviously freshmen in their first flush of enthusiasm. An older man, going the same way as I, turned and remarked to me how very young they came these days. I agreed. Then he asked me if I was a student too. I said no, I was a teacher. What did I teach? African literature. Now that was funny, he said, because he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff, you know. By this time I was walking much faster. “Oh well,” I heard him say finally, behind me,

“I guess I have to take your course to find out.” A few weeks later I received two very touching letters from high-school children in Yonkers, New York, who—bless their teacher —had just read Things Fall Apart. One of them was particularly happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African tribe. I propose to draw from these rather trivial encounters rather heavy conclusions which at first sight might seem somewhat out of proportion to them: But only at first sight. The young fellow from Yonkers, perhaps partly on account of his age but I believe also for much deeper and more serious reasons, is obviously unaware that the life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is full of odd customs and superstitions and, like everybody else in his culture, imagines that he needs a trip to Africa to encounter those things. The other person being fully my own age could not be excused on the grounds of his years. Ignorance might be a more likely reason; but here again I believe that something more willful than a mere lack of information was at work. For did not that erudite British historian and Regius Professor at Oxford, Hugh Trevor Roper, pronounce a few years ago that African history did not exist?

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Achebe: An Image ofAfrica

If there is something in these utterances more than youthful experience, more than a lack of factual knowledge, what is it? Quite simply it is the desire— one might indeed say the need—in Western psychology to set up Africa as a foil to Europe, a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest. This need is not new: which should relieve us of considerable responsibility and perhaps make us even willing to look at this phenomenon dispassionately. 1 have neither the desire nor, indeed, the competence to do so with the tools of the social

of and biological sciences. But, I can respond, as a novelist, to one famous book

European fiction, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which better than any other work I know displays that Western desire and need which I have just spoken about. Of course, there are whole libraries of books devoted to the same purpose, but most of them are so obvious and so crude that few people worry about them today. Conrad, on the other hand, is undoubtedly one of the great stylists of modern fiction and a good storyteller into the bargain. His contribution therefore falls automatiread and taught and constantly — re literatu s — permanent cally into a different clas indeed so secure today that a 1s Darkness of Heart evaluated by serious academics. short novleading Conrad scholar has numbered it “among the half-dozen greatest in due course els in the English language.”’ I will return to this critical opinion or may not may who about suppositions earlier my modify because it may seriously be guilty in the things of which I will now speak. the antithesis Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as “the other world,” vaunted intelligence of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where a man’s ty. The book opens on the and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiali of day after ages of good River Thames, tranquil, resting peacefully “at the decline the actual story takes place on service done to the race that peopled its banks.” But The River Congo is quite decidthe River Congo, the very antithesis of the Thames. and enjoys no old-age pension. edly not a River Emeritus. It has rendered no service ng back to the earliest beginning We are told that “going up that river was like travelli of the world.” very different, one good, the Is Conrad saying then that these two rivers are

What actually worries Conrad is the other bad? Yes, but that is not the real point. ry. For the Thames, too, “has been one of lurking hint of kinship, of common ancest is now at

darkness, of course, and the dark places of the earth.” It conquered its the rdial relative, the Congo, it would run peace. But if it were to visit its primo ss, darkne ten echoes of its own forgot terrible risk of hearing grotesque, suggestive nce of the mindless frenzy of the first desce recru ing and of falling victim to an aveng

beginnings.

;

ples of Conrad’s famed evocation I am not going to waste your time with exam deration it amounts to no more than a of the African atmosphere. In the final consi York: New American d, Introduction to Heart of Darkness (New ‘among -- - language”: Albert J. Guerar Library, 1950), p- 9-

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steady, ponderous, fake-ritualistic repetition of two sentences, one about silence and the other about frenzy. An example of the former is “It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention” and of the latter, “The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy.” Of course, there is a judicious change of adjective from time to time so that instead of “inscrutable,” for example, you might have “unspeakable,” etc., etc. The eagle-eyed English critic, FE. R. Leavis, drew attention nearly thirty years ago to Conrad’s “adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery.” That insistence must not be dismissed lightly, as many Conrad critics have tended to do, as a mere stylistic flaw. For it raises serious questions of artistic good faith. When a writer, while pretending to record scenes, incidents and their impact, is in reality engaged in inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery, much more has to be at stake than stylistic felicity. Generally, normal readers are well armed to detect and resist such underhand activity. But Conrad chose his subject well—one which was guaranteed not to put him in conflict with the psychological predisposition of his readers or raise the need for him to contend with their resistance. He chose the role of purveyor of comforting myths. The most interesting and revealing passages in Heart of Darkness are, however, about people. I must quote a long passage from the middle of the story in which representatives of Europe in a steamer going down the Congo encounter the denizens of Africa: We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign — and no memories. The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend.

Achebe: An Image ofAfrica

Herein lies the meaning of Heart of Darkness and the fascination it holds over the Western mind: “What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity —like yours. ... Ugly.” Having shown us Africa in the mass, Conrad then zeros in on a specific example, giving us one of his rare descriptions of an African who is not just limbs or rolling eyes: And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam gauge and at the water gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity— and he had filed his teeth, too, the poor devil, on and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars feet his stamping and hands his each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping

full on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft,

of improving knowledge.

exactly admire As everybody knows, Conrad is a romantic on the side. He might not least the merit at have they but feet their savages clapping their hands and stamping things Conrad, For . breeches of parody of being in their place, unlike this dog in a nce. importa (and persons) being in their place is of the utmost quite unexpectTowards the end of the story, Conrad lavishes great attention mistress to Mr. of kind some been ly edly on an African woman who has obvious ) like a forConrad of on imitati little a Kurtz and now presides (if Imay be permitted re: departu his of nce midable mystery over the inexorable immine . . . She stood looking at us She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent air of brooding over an an with itself, without a stir and like the wilderness inscrutable purpose.

of a predictable nature, for two This Amazon is drawn in considerable detail, albeit d’s special brand of approval; Conra reasons. First, she is in her place and so can win story; she is a savage counterthe of and second, she fulfills a structural requirement will end: story the part to the refined, European woman with whom floating towards me in the dusk. She She came forward, all in black with a pale head, hers and murmured, “I had heard in was in mourning... . She took both my hands fidelity, for belief, for suffering. for ty capaci e you were coming” . .. She had a matur

to these two women is conveyed in The difference in the attitude of the novelist elaboration. But perhaps the most signifitoo many direct and subtle ways to need r’s bestowal of human expression to cant difference is the one implied in the autho other. It is clearly not part of Conrad’s the one and the withholding of it from the only “rudimentary souls” of Africa. They purpose to confer language on the were they y mostl but elves among thems “exchanged short grunting phrases” even er, when are two occasions in the book, howev too busy with their frenzy. There

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Conrad departs somewhat from his practice and confers speech, even English speech, on the savages. The first occurs when cannibalism gets the better of them: “Catch im,” he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp white teeth — “catch ’im. Give ’im to us.” “To you, eh?” I asked; “what would you do

with them?” “Eat ’im!” he said curtly . . . The other occasion is the famous announcement: Mistah Kurtz— he dead.

At first sight, these instances might be mistaken for unexpected acts of generosity from Conrad. In reality, they constitute some of his best assaults. In the case of the

cannibals, the incomprehensible grunts that had thus far served them for speech suddenly proved inadequate for Conrad’s purpose of letting the European glimpse the unspeakable craving in their hearts. Weighing the necessity for consistency in the portrayal of the dumb brutes against the sensational advantages of securing their conviction by clear, unambiguous evidence issuing out of their own mouth, Conrad chose the latter. As for the announcement of Mr. Kurtz’s death by the “insolent black head in the doorway,’ what better or more appropriate finis could be written to the horror story of that wayward child of civilization who willfully had given his soul to the powers of darkness and “taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land” than the proclamation of his physical death by the forces he had joined? It might be contended, of course, that the attitude to the African in Heart of Darkness is not Conrad’s but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow, and that far from

endorsing it Conrad might indeed be holding it up to irony and criticism. Certainly, Conrad appears to go to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his story. He has, for example, a narrator behind a

narrator. The primary narrator is Marlow but his account is given to us through the filter of a second, shadowy person. But if Conrad’s intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire’ between himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator, his care seems to me totally wasted because he neglects to hint however subtly or tentatively at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters. It would not have been beyond Conrad’s power to make that provision if he had thought it necessary. Marlow seems to me to enjoy Conrad’s complete confidence—a feeling reinforced by the close similarities between their careers. Marlow comes through to us not only as a witness of truth, but one holding those advanced and humane views appropriate to the English liberal tradition which required all Englishmen of decency to be deeply shocked by atrocities in Bulgaria or the Congo of King Leopold of the Belgians or wherever. Thus Marlow is able to toss out such bleeding-heart sentiments as these: They were all dying slowly —it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now—nothing but black shadows of disease

? cordon sanitaire: A buffer.

Achebe: An Image of Africa

and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then

allowed to crawl away and rest.

The kind of liberalism espoused here by Marlow/Conrad touched all the best minds of the age in England, Europe, and America. It took different forms in the minds of different people but almost always managed to sidestep the ultimate question of equality between white people and black people. That extraordinary missionary, Albert Schweitzer, who sacrificed brilliant careers in music and theology in Europe

for a life of service to Africans in much the same area as Conrad writes about, epitomizes the ambivalence. In a comment which I have often quoted but must quote one last time Schweitzer says: “The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother.” And so he proceeded to build a hospital appropriate to the needs of junior brothers with standards of hygiene reminiscent of medical practice in the days before the germ theory of disease came into being. Naturally, he became a sensation in Europe to and America. Pilgrims flocked, and I believe still flock even after he has passed on, forest. primeval the of edge the on witness the prodigious miracle in Lamberene, He Conrad’s liberalism would not take him quite as far as Schweitzer’s, though. was go would he farthest the ; qualified would not use the word “brother” however in his heart he “kinship.” When Marlow’s African helmsman falls down with a spear look. gives his white master one final disquieting he received his hurt And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when affirmed in a kinship distant of claim a remains to this day in my memory—like supreme moment. with his words, is not talking so It is important to note that Conrad, careful as ever

a claim on it. The black man much about distant kinship as about someone laying able. It is the laying of this lays a claim on the white man which is well-nigh intoler , “... the thought of Conrad claim which frightens and at the same time fascinates their humanity—like yours . . . Ugly.” by now, namely, that Conrad The point of my observations should be quite clear in criticism of his work is over d was a bloody racist. That this simple truth is glosse l way of thinking that norma a such due to the fact that white racism against Africa is ofDarkness will often Heart of ts its manifestations go completely undetected. Studen the deterioration with as Africa with tell you that Conrad is concerned not so much point out to you will They ss. sickne of one European mind caused by solitude and than he is to story the in eans the Europ that Conrad is, if anything, less charitable to is merely a Africa that year nd last the natives. A Conrad student told me in Scotla of Mr. Kurtz. setting for the disintegration of the mind ng and backdrop which eliminates the setti as a Afric : point the y Which is partl al battlefield devoid of all recognizable African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysic writer, physicist, and missionary; an philosopher, theologian, musician, 3 Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965): Alsati Africa. West , hospital at Lamberene, in Gabon

he gave his life to a medical mission and

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humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Of course, there is a preposterous and perverse kind of arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the breakup of one petty European mind. But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot.

I would not call that man an artist, for example, who composes an eloquent instigation to one people to fall upon another and destroy them. No matter how striking his imagery or how beautifully his cadences fall, such a man is no more a great artist than another may be called a priest who reads the mass backwards or a physician who poisons his patients. All those men in Nazi Germany who lent their talent to the service of virulent racism whether in science, philosophy, or the arts have generally and rightly been condemned for their perversions. The time is long overdue for taking a hard look at the work of creative artists who apply their talents, alas often considerable as in the case of Conrad, to set people against people. This, I take it, is what Yevtushenko’ is after when he tells us that a poet cannot be a slave trader at the same time, and gives the striking example of Arthur Rimbaud,’ who was fortunately honest enough to give up any pretenses to poetry when he opted for slave trading. For poetry surely can only be on the side of man’s deliverance and not his enslavement; for the brotherhood and unity of all mankind and against the doctrines of Hitler’s master races or Conrad’s “rudimentary souls.” Last year was the fiftieth anniversary of Conrad’s death. He was born in 1857, the very year in which the first Anglican missionaries were arriving among my own people in Nigeria. It was certainly not his fault that he lived his life at a time when the reputation of the black man was at a particularly low level. But even after due allowances have been made for all the influences of contemporary prejudice on his sensibility, there remains still in Conrad’s attitude a residue of antipathy to black people which his peculiar psychology alone can explain. His own account of his first encounter with a black man is very revealing: A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards.

Certainly, Conrad had a problem with niggers. His inordinate love of that word itself should be of interest to psychoanalysts. Sometimes his fixation on blackness is equally interesting as when he gives us this brief description: A black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms.

“Yevtushenko: Yevgeny Yevtushenko (b. 1933), Russian poet known in the West in particular for his poems

criticizing Stalinism.

* Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891): French Symbolist poet who abandoned poetry for a life of adventure; among his later occupations were slave trading and gunrunning.

Achebe: An Image of Africa

as though we might expect a black figure striding along on black legs to wave white arms! But so unrelenting is Conrad’s obsession. As a matter of interest Conrad gives us in A Personal Record what amounts to a companion piece to the buck nigger of Haiti. At the age of sixteen Conrad encountered his first Englishman in Europe. He calls him “my unforgettable Englishman” and describes him in the following manner: [his] calves exposed to the public gaze . . . dazzled the beholder by the splendor of their marble-like condition and their rich tone of young ivory... The light of a headlong, exalted satisfaction with the world of men... illumined his face . . . and triumphant eyes. In passing he cast a glance of kindly curiosity and a friendly gleam of big, sound, shiny teeth . . . his white calves twinkled sturdily.

Irrational love and irrational hate jostling together in the heart of that tormented man. But whereas irrational love may at worst engender foolish acts of indiscretion, irrational hate can endanger the life of the community. Naturally, Conrad is a dream is for psychoanalytic critics. Perhaps the most detailed study of him in this direction le by Bernard C. Meyer, M.D. In this lengthy book, Dr. Meyer follows every conceivab he gives lead (and sometimes inconceivable ones) to explain Conrad. As an example, yet And us long disquisitions on the significance of hair and hair-cutting in Conrad. discussion the not even one word is spared for his attitude to black people. Not even mind those other of Conrad’s anti-Semitism was enough to spark off in Dr. Meyer’s Western psychodark and explosive thoughts. Which only leads one to surmise that as absolutely normal analysts must regard the kind of racism displayed by Conrad in the psychiatric despite the profoundly important work done by Frantz Fanon’ hospitals of French Algeria. safely dead. Quite Whatever Conrad’s problems were, you might say he is now why an offensive is Which true. Unfortunately, his heart of darkness plagues us still. “among the half as scholar and totally deplorable book can be described by a serious perhaps the today is and why it dozen greatest short novels in the English language,’ in our courses ure literat most commonly prescribed novel in the twentieth-century at look hard a for e is long overdu own English Department here. Indeed the time things. I have said so far may be conThere are two probable grounds on which what n to please people about whom it is tested. The first is that it is no concern of fictio talking about pleasing people. I am written. I will go along with that. But I am not most vulgar fashion prejudices and talking about a book which parades in the suffered untold agonies and atrocities -nsults from which a section of mankind has ways and many places today. I am talking in the past and continues to do so in many of black people is called in question. It about a story in which the very humanity great art or even good art could possibly seems to me totally inconceivable that reside in such unwholesome surroundings. Martinique; author of Black and theorist of the colonial mind from ° Frantz Fanon (1925-1961): Psychiatrist (1961). Earth the ed of Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretch

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Secondly, I may be challenged on the grounds of actuality. Conrad, after all, sailed down the Congo in 1890 when my own father was still a babe in arms, and recorded what he saw. How could I stand up in 1975, fifty years after his death and purport to contradict him? My answer is that as a sensible man I will not accept just any traveller’s tales solely on the grounds that I have not made the journey myself. I will not trust the evidence even of a man’s very eyes when I suspect them to be as jaundiced as Conrad’s. And we also happen to know that Conrad was, in the words of his biographer, Bernard C. Meyer, “notoriously inaccurate in the rendering of his

own history.” But more important by far is the abundant testimony about Conrad’s savages which we could gather if we were so inclined from other sources and which might lead us to think that these people must have had other occupations besides merging into the evil forest or materializing out of it simply to plague Marlow and his dispirited band. For as it happened, soon after Conrad had written his book an event of far greater consequence was taking place in the art world of Europe. This is how Frank Willett, a British art historian, describes it:

Gauguin had gone to Tahiti, the most extravagant individual act of turning to a non-European culture in the decades immediately before and after 1900, when European artists were avid for new artistic experiences, but it was only about 1904-5 that African art began to make its distinctive impact. One piece is still identifiable; it is a mask that had been given to Maurice Vlaminck in 1905. He records that Derain

was “speechless” and “stunned” when he saw it, bought it from Vlaminck and in turn showed it to Picasso and Matisse, who were also greatly affected by it. Ambroise Vollard then borrowed it and had it cast in bronze . . . The revolution of twentieth century art was under way!"

The mask in question was made by other savages living just north of Conrad’s River Congo. They have a name, the Fang people, and are without a doubt among the world’s greatest masters of the sculptured form. As you might have guessed, the event to which Frank Willett refers marked the beginning of cubism and the infusion of new life into European art that had run completely out of strength. The point of all this is to suggest that Conrad’s picture of the people of the Congo seems grossly inadequate even at the height of their subjection to the ravages of King Leopold’s International Association for the Civilization of Central Africa. Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves. But even those not blinkered, like Conrad, with xenophobia, can be astonishingly blind. Let me digress a little here. One of the greatest and most intrepid travellers of all time, Marco Polo, journeyed to the Far East from the Mediterranean in the thir-

teenth century and spent twenty years in the court of Kublai Khan in China. On his return to Venice he set down in his book entitled Description of the World his impressions of the peoples and places and customs he had seen. There are at least two

“notoriously . . . history”: Meyer, p. 30. *Gaugin . . . under way: Frank Willett, African Art (New York: Praeger, 1971), pp. 35-36.

Achebe: An Image of Africa

extraordinary omissions in his account. He says nothing about the art of printing unknown as yet in Europe but in full flower in China. He either did not notice it at all or if he did, failed to see what use Europe could possibly have for it. Whatever reason, Europe had to wait another hundred years for Gutenberg. But even more spectacular was Marco Polo’s omission of any reference to the Great Wall of China nearly four thousand miles long and already more than one thousand years old at the time of his visit. Again, he may not have seen it; but the Great Wall of China is the only structure built by man which is visible from the moon!” Indeed, travellers can be blind. As I said earlier, Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it. For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry, the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparing itself to Africa. If Europe, advancing in civilization, could it cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in primordial barbarity, to is Africa I. go could say with faith and feeling: There, but for the grace of God, —a carrier onto whom the master unloads Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray’ immaculate. his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and be hidden to has Consequently, Africa is something to be avoided just as the picture or else! Africa, from away to safeguard the man’s jeopardous integrity. Keep away prowling the and Mr. Kurtz of Heart of Darkness should have heeded that warning lair. But he foolishly horror in his heart would have kept its place, chained to its lo! the darkness and exposed himself to the wild irresistible allure of the jungle

him out. found conclude it nicely on an In my original conception of this talk I had thought to privileged position in my appropriately positive note in which I would suggest from derive from Africa might African and Western culture some advantages the West through a haze not Africa at once it rid its mind of old prejudices and began to look of people— ent contin a as of distortions and cheap mystification but quite simply gifted highly often people, not angels, but not rudimentary souls either—just as But . society and life with ise people and often strikingly successful in their enterpr about veness, pervasi and its grip I thought more about the stereotype image, about heart; when I thought of your its to it holds West the which with the willful tenacity of about books read in schools and out television and the cinema and newspapers, heaempty pews about the need to send help to the

school, of churches preaching to was possible. And there is something then in Africa, I realized that no easy optimism return for its good opinion of Africa. totally wrong in offering bribes to the West in thoughts must be its own and only Ultimately, the abandonment of unwholesome Polo as recreated by China, I am indebted to The Journey of Marco 9 About the omission of the Great Wall of ] note. e’s [Acheb 1974. ne, Pegasus Magazi artist Michael Foreman, published by a portrait of the protagWilde’s novel The Picture ofDorian Gray (1891), Oscar In Gray: n Doria . . . is 10 Africa while he himself remains young. onist bears all his marks of age and guilt

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reward. Although I have used the word willful a few times in this talk to characterize the West’s view of Africa it may well be that what is happening at this stage is more akin to reflex action than calculated malice. Which does not make the situation more, but less, hopeful. Let me give you one last and really minor example of what I mean. Last November the Christian Science Monitor carried an interesting article written by its education editor on the serious psychological and learning problems faced by little children who speak one language at home and then go to school where something else is spoken. It was a wide-ranging article taking in Spanish-speaking children in this country, the children of migrant Italian workers in Germany, the quadrilingual phenomenon in Malaysia, and so on. And all this while the article speaks unequivocally about language. But then out of the blue sky comes this: In London there is an enormous immigration of children who speak Indian or Nigerian dialects, or some other native language." I believe that the introduction of dialects, which is technically erroneous in the con-

text, is almost a reflex action caused by an instinctive desire of the writer to downgrade the discussion to the level of Africa and India. And this is quite comparable to Conrad’s withholding of language from his rudimentary souls. Language is too grand for these chaps; let’s give them dialects. In all this business a lot of violence is inevitably done to words and their meaning. Look at the phrase “native language” in the above excerpt. Surely the only native language possible in London is Cockney English. But our writer obviously means something else—something Indians and Africans speak. Perhaps a change will come. Perhaps this is the time when it can begin, when the high optimism engendered by the breathtaking achievements of Western science and industry is giving way to doubt and even confusion. There is just the possibility that Western man may begin to look seriously at the achievements of other people. I read in the papers the other day a suggestion that what America needs at this time is somehow to bring back the extended family. And I saw in my mind’s eye future African Peace Corps Volunteers coming to help you set up the system. Seriously, although the work which needs to be done may appear too daunting, I believe that it is not one day too soon to begin. And where better than at a University?

"In London . . . language: Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 15, 1974, p- 1.

Q~w

DEREK WALCOTT B. ST. LUCIA, 1930

Growing up on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Derek Walcott was exposed at an early age to a wide range of peoples and customs whose roots extended to Africa, Asia, and Europe. The history of the region also included indigenous peoples who had been largely exterminated by Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century. Walcott’s substantial body of — poetry and plays—addresses the social and political realities ofa work diverse and turbulent history. Like other West Indian writers and artists, Walcott is interested in the search for identity within such a cultural collage. After the decimation of the original West Indians through slavery some five million Africans were brought in to work as slaves disease, and on the islands’ plantations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century, East Indian, Chinese, Portuguese, and Irish immigrants were recruited to work the fields of sugar cane. An early pattern of an elite white ruling class dominating a into peasant working class comprising various ethnic groups prevailed concernidentity of question the twentieth century. Thus, the most basic ing the West Indies has to do with the name of these islands and their res:dents. The current name, “West Indies,” perpetuates the misnomer of the coined by Columbus in 1492 when he called the native peoples “East the from them Americas “Indians” and used “West” to distinguish been also have Antilles Lesser and Greater Indians” of India. The terms island legendary a of name the was Antilles but used for the region, Columbus's located between Europe and Japan on medieval maps; after of the West Residents “discovery,” the Spanish called the islands Antillas. idenpersonal their with only not p Indies have a complicated relationshi well. as land their tity but with that of a mosaic that Walcott’s writings are a personal odyssey, a search for complicated vision a region, would harmonize the diversity of his native h, French, Spanis h, Englis — there by the multiplicity of languages spoken PATisland and s dialect CREOLE of variety a n and Dutch—not to mentio of ation combin a f ois (a regional form of a language). Walcott, himsel and classes social s variou the different ethnic groups, sympathizes with who see themselves as mores on the islands. His writings appeal to many origins. The experimixed of s people os'— ethnic and cultural mesT1z zers is one of the fundaence of native peoples under European coloni ance to such modern import mental stories of the Americas and of central Mexico, and Leslie of s Fuente writers as Pablo Neruda of Chile, Carlos States. United estern Marmon Silko of the southw

Rune Hellestad,

Derek Walcott, 1992

The Nobel Prize—

winning poet and playwright. (© Rune Hellestad/CORBIS)

For links to more information about Derek Walcott

and a quiz on his poetry, see bedford stmartins.com/ worldlitcompact.

can countries to refer to ng “mixed,” was first used in Latin Ameri | mestizos: Mestizo, a Spanish word meani with the intermarrying of ; person nous indige an with uese Portug a children of a mixed couple, a Spanish or has come to have a broader application. various immigrant groups-since, mestizo

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DEREK WALCOTT

No poet rivals Mr.

Walcott’s Mixed Heritage.

Walcott in humor,

parentage on January 23, 1930, in Castries, the capital of St. Lucia. His

emotional depth,

mother was white and his father black, an official and artist who died shortly after Derek’s birth. His mother then became headmistress at a Methodist elementary school. Derek, who was Protestant and middle class in a largely black, Roman Catholic, working-class society, experienced the tension between contrasting cultures at an early age. Moreover, his first language was English in a society that spoke French creole (a blend of French and the language originally spoken on the islands). Early in his secondary education at St. Mary’s College, in Castries, Walcott discovered his calling as a poet, his responsibility to protect his island’s heritage, and his sympathy for the poor. His first two volumes of

lavish inventiveness

in language or in the ability to express the thoughts of his char» acters.... — The New York Times Book Review

Derek Walcott was born of racially mixed

poetry, 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young (1949), are about his childhood on St. Lucia. In 1950, along with Maurice Mason, Walcott

founded the St. Lucian Arts Guild, where he produced Henri Christophe (1950), a historical play about the Haitian

revolution.

Derek’s

twin

brother, Roddy, ran this influential theater when Derek left to attend the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, on a scholarship. After

receiving a B.A., Walcott taught school in Kingston, later working as a feature writer for The Sunday Guardian, out of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. Education in the United States and the Search for Roots in the West Indies. A Rockefeller Fellowship in theater brought Walcott to New York University in 1957. The civil rights movement in the United States during the late 1950s and the 1960s opened Walcott’s eyes to the complexities of race issues. Returning to Port-of-Spain in 1959, Walcott founded Trinidad

Theatre Workshop (known originally as Little Carib Theatre Workshop), which occupied him for close to two decades, until 1976. In his first important collection of poems, In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1962 (1962), work

To begin with, we are poor. That gives us a privilege. ... The

stripped and naked man, however abused, however disabused ofold beliefs,

instinctually, even desperately begins

again as a craftsman. — Derek WALcoTT, 1974

that extended his reputation beyond the Caribbean, Walcott explored his heritage as a West Indian. During this time he also wrote one of his most impressive plays, Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967), in which the dreams of the hero, Makak, give voice to the history of colonial oppression and a peoples’ ties to Africa. The Castaway (1969) uses the figure of Robinson Crusoe to embody the solitary search for identity. Another Life (1973) is a

series of autobiographical poems that invoke the spirit of the ancient Greek traveler Odysseus and the meaning of the search for home. In his next two collections of poetry, Sea Grapes (1976) and Star

Apple Kingdom (1977), Walcott wrote about the role of the poet as well as the legacy of slavery, “the Mrppie Passacg,” and colonial domination. The plays Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958) and Pantomime (1978) also deal

with the consequences and the legacy of slavery. The Joker of Seville (1974) retells Tirso de Molina’s sixteenth-century story of Don Juan in a West Indian setting. O Babylon! was published with The Joker and involves a RASTAFARIAN’ Cult in Jamaica.

* Rastafarian: Having to do with a religious cult in Jamaica that regards the late Haile Selassie of Ethiopia as the messiah; reggae music and the late Bob Marley are associated with Rastafarianism.

Derek Walcott, 1930

In 1979, Walcott was named an honorary member of the American

1735

The Caribbean has

Academy of Arts and Letters. His travels between the United States and

remained a green

the Caribbean stimulated the poems in The Fortunate Traveler (1981), in

place, even if, as

which he recognizes the stark contrast of the powerful, wealthy United States with the impoverished Caribbean. Walcott’s Collected Poems was published in 1986, followed by The Arkansas Testament (1987), a collection of poems about St. Lucia. In Omeros (1990), an epic poem loosely related to Homer’s epics and to Dante’s Divine Comedy,’ Walcott weaves together many of the themes of his previous writing while celebrating the rich folk traditions of African descendants in the West Indies. In 1992, he

was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The poems selected here touch on themes central to Selected Poems. Walcott’s writings. Like a number of writers sympathetic to the impact of colonization on indigenous peoples, Walcott was carried by his work into the very culture that symbolizes domination and oppression —that of white America. The poem “A Latin Primer” deals with the influence of Walcott’s education on the process of his becoming a poet, the tension between the educational opportunities provided by the privileged elite and the richness of the folk traditions preserved by the oppressed majority. “White Magic” further explores the cultural conflict between white secularism and the folk traditions of the islands. The United States provides Walcott with the opportunity to publish and work at universities, but his involvement with its culture has the potential to estrange him voices from the Caribbean culture of his childhood. His poetry, in fact, two the In life. island of textures rich the for outsider an of yearning the end employing compactly, poems that follow, Walcott writes tightly, rhyme with a light touch. ement “The Light of the World” reveals the anatomy of estrang rhythm looser a Though woman. island ul beautif a of symbol the through and thoughtprevails here, the poem's images are characteristically dense American fellow a to tribute pays ful. In “For Pablo Neruda,” Walcott and ethnic the ed embrac ies sympath broad n whose — poet —a Chilea style poetic ’s historical extremes of North and South America. Walcott complex metaphors has affinities with Neruda’s: Both make use of rich, by European concaused ng sufferi as a means of yoking the disparate ltural society. multicu a in living of ictions contrad quest and the potential @ FURTHER

Derek Walcott has written, “the golden apples of this sun are

shot with acid.” Between the nightmare of the slave bar-

racoons [barracks], and the vision of Adamic islands, have

emerged the imagined worlds. .

RESEARCH

Historical and Cultural Background Brathwaite, Kamau. Roots. 1993. Wild Majesty: Encounters with Caribs from Hulme, Peter, and Neil L. Whitehead, eds. Columbus to the Present Day. 1992. . 1999. James, Louis. Caribbean Literature in English

Dante (1265-1321) y B.C.E.) wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey; 3Homer’s . . . Comedy: Homer (eighth centur to purgatory and then and a spiritual pilgrimage to the underworld wrote the Divine Comedy, a trilogy about heaven.

.

—Loults JAMES, critic, 1999

1736

DEREK WALCOTT Critical Works on Derek Walcott

Erada, Rei. Derek Walcott’s Poetry: American Mimicry. 1992. Goldstraw, Irma. Derek Walcott: An Annotated Bibliography of His Writings, 1944-1984. 1984.

Hamner, Robert D. Derek Walcott. 1994. ——.,, ed. Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott. 1993. King, Bruce L. The Theatre of Derek Walcott. 1996. Thieme, John. Derek Walcott. 1999.

Qw

A Latin Primer (In Memoriam: H. D. Boxill)

I had nothing against which to notch the growth of my work but the horizon, no language but the shallows in my long walk home, so I shook all the help my young right hand could use from the sand-crusted kelp of distant literatures.

The frigate bird’ my phoenix,” 10

I was high on iodine, one drop from the sun’s murex stained the foam’s fabric wine;

ploughing white fields of surf with a boy’s shins, I kept

staggering as the shelf of sand under me slipped,

then found my deepest wish in the swaying words of the sea, 20

and the skeletal fish of that boy is ribbed in me;

frigate bird: A large, tropical seabird with V-shaped wings and tail; the Fregata magnificens. * phoenix: A mythical bird from ancient Egypt; said to renew itself by rising out of its own ashes, it symbolizes immortality.

A Latin Primer

but I saw how the bronze dusk of imperial palms curled their fronds into questions over Latin exams.

I hated signs of scansion. Those strokes across the line drizzled on the horizon

and darkened discipline.

30

They were like Mathematics that made delight Design, arranging the thrown sticks

of stars to sine and cosine.” Raging, I’d skip a pebble across the sea’s page; it still

scanned its own syllable:

trochee, anapest, dactyl.* Miles,’ foot soldier. Fossa,

40

a trench or a grave. My hand hefts a last sand bomb to toss at slowly fading sand. I failed Matriculation in Maths; passed it; after that,

I taught Love’s basic Latin: Amo, amas, amat.°

In tweed jacket and tie a master at my college I watched the old words dry like seaweed on the page.

50

Pd muse from the roofed harbour back to my desk, the boys’

ometry. 3 cine and cosine: Technical terms in trigon in a line of verse. accented and unaccented syllables of words of s pattern on Comm 4trochee . . . dactyl:

a U.S. soldier who worked his way to Nelson Appleton Miles (1839-1925), 5 Miles: Latin for “soldier”; also refers against Native Americans in the West and

Civil War, Miles led troops up from foot soldier to general. After the erican War (1895-1898). sh-Am Spani the during fought in the Caribbean n of the Latin amare, “to love.” 6 Amo, amas, amat: The first conjugatio

1737

1738

| DEREK WALCOTT heads plunged in paper softly as porpoises. The discipline I preached made me a hypocrite; their lithe black bodies, beached, would die in dialect;

60

I spun the globe’s meridian, showed its sealed hemispheres, but where were those brows heading when neither world was theirs? Silence clogged my ears with cotton, a cloud’s noise;

I climbed white tiered arenas

trying to find my voice, and I remember: it was ona Saturday near noon, at Vigie,’ that my heart, rounding the corner

of Half-Moon Battery,’

70

stopped to watch the foundry of midday cast in bronze the trunk of a gommier tree on a sea without seasons,

while ochre Rat Island was nibbling the sea’s lace,

that a frigate bird came sailing through a tree’s net, to raise

80

its emblem in the cirrus, named with the common sense of fishermen: sea scissors, Fregata magnificens,

’Vigie: The Vigie peninsula forms the northern side of the Castries Harbor of St. Lucia, an island in the Caribbean.

*Half-Moon Battery: Remnant of a fortification from the three hundred years of fighting between England and France over ownership of St. Lucia.

1739

ciseau-la-mer,’ the patois’ for its cloud-cutting course; and that native metaphor made by the strokes of oars,

with one wing beat for scansion, that slowly levelling V made one with my horizon as it sailed steadily beyond the sheep-nibbled columns of fallen marble trees, or the roofless pillars once

90

sacred to Hercules." 9 ciseau-la-mer: Erench for “sea scissors,” or “scissors of the sea.”

10 Hatois: A local dialect that is a variation of an area’s standard language. of Hercules flanked the Strait 1 Hercules: Roman name of the Greek hero and god Heracles; the ancient Pillars Africa. in Acha, Mt. and Europe, of Gibraltar between Gibraltar, in

Qy

White Magic (For Leo St. Helene)

The gens-gagée’ kicks off her wrinkled skin. Clap her soul in a jar! The half-man wolf can trot with bending elbows, rise, and grin in lockjawed lycanthropia.” Censers dissolve the ground fog with its whistling, wandering souls, the unbaptized, unfinished, and uncursed

by holy fiat. The island’s griots’ love

our mushroom elves, the devil’s parasols

10

who creep like grubs from a trunk’s rotten holes, their mouths a sewn seam, their clubfeet reversed.

' gens-gagée: Island patois for “spirit being.”

that one has and anthropos (man); lycanthropy is the belief *|ycanthropia: From the Greek lykoi (wolf)

become a wolf.

is to keep an oral the peoples of western Africa whose function 3 griots: Members of a hereditary caste among of the people.

stories, songs, and poems history of the tribe or village and to tell the

1740

DEREK WALCOTT

Exorcism cannot anachronize those signs we hear past midnight in a wood where a pale woman like a blind owl flies to her forked branch, with scarlet moons for eyes bubbling with doubt. You heard a silver splash? It’s nothing. If it slid from mossed rocks dismiss it as a tired crab, a fish,

unless our water-mother with dank locks is sliding under this page below your pen, only a simple people think they happen. Dryads and hamadryads* were engrained in the wood’s bark, in papyrus, and this paper; but when our dry leaves crackle to the deer-

20

footed, hobbling hunter, Papa Bois,”

he’s just Pan’s® clone, one more translated satyr. The crone who steps from her jute sugar sack (though you line moonlit lintels with white flour), the beau Phomme’ creeping towards you, front to back,

the ferny footed, faceless, mouse-eared elves, these fables of the backward and the poor marbled by moonlight, will grow white and richer. Our myths are ignorance, theirs are literature.

30

*Dryads and hamadryads: Deities or nymphs of the woods; hamadryads are spirits of particular trees. Papa Bois: Refers to a notorious pirate, Jambe de Bois (French for “wooden leg”), who had a hideout on

Pigeon Island, off the west coast of St. Lucia. °Pan: Greek god of pastures, flocks, and shepherds; symbolic of the sexual energy of nature, which took the form of a goatlike creature, the satyr. This figure was “translated” by medieval Christians into Satan. ” beau Vhomme: French for “handsome man.”

OW

The Light of the World Kaya now, got to have kaya now, Got to have kaya now, For the rain is falling. —Bos Mar.ey’

Marley was rocking on the transport’s stereo and the beauty was humming the choruses quietly. I could see where the lights on the planes of her cheek streaked and defined them; if this were a portrait "Bob Marley (1945-1981): Jamaican-born reggae singer committed to nonviolence and the Rastafarian religion.

The Light of the World

youd leave the highlights for last, these lights silkened her black skin; I’d have put in an earring,

something simple, in good gold, for contrast, but she wore no jewelry. I imagined a powerful and sweet odour coming from her, as from a still panther, and the head was nothing else but heraldic. When she looked at me, then away from me politely because any staring at strangers is impolite,

it was like a statue, like a black Delacroix’s® Liberty Leading the People, the gently bulging whites of her eyes, the carved ebony mouth, the heft of the torso solid, and a woman’s, but gradually even that was going in the dusk, except the line of her profile, and the highlit cheek, and I thought, O Beauty, you are the light of the world! 20

It was not the only time I would think of that phrase in the sixteen-seater transport that hummed between

Gros-Islet? and the Market, with its grit of charcoal

and the litter of vegetables after Saturday’s sales, and the roaring rum shops, outside whose bright doors you saw drunk women on pavements, the saddest of all things, winding up their week, winding down their week. The Market, as it closed on this Saturday night,

30

remembered a childhood of wandering gas lanterns hung on poles at street corners, and the old roar of vendors and traffic, when the lamplighter climbed, hooked the lantern on its pole and moved on to another, and the children turned their faces to its moth, their

eyes white as their nighties; the Market itself was closed in its involved darkness

and the shadows quarrelled for bread in the shops,

or quarrelled for the formal custom of quarrelling in the electric rum shops. I remember the shadows.

40

The van was slowly filling in the darkening depot. I sat in the front seat, I had no need for time. [looked at two girls, one in a yellow bodice and yellow shorts, with a flower in her hair,

and lusted in peace, the other less interesting.

Morocco in 1832 inspired French Romantic painter whose visit to 2 Delacroix: Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863),

an interest in “exotic” subjects. of St. Lucia known for its weekly carnivals. 3 Gros- Islet: Fishing village on the northwest coast

1741

1742

DEREK WALCOTT

That evening I had walked the streets of the town where I was born and grew up, thinking of my mother with her white hair tinted by the dyeing dusk, and the tilting box houses that seemed perverse in their cramp; I had peered into parlours with half-closed jalousies, at the dim furniture, 50

Morris chairs,’ a centre table with wax flowers, and the lithograph of Christ of the Sacred Heart,” vendors still selling to the empty streets— sweets, nuts, sodden chocolates, nut cakes, mints.

An old woman with a straw hat over her headkerchief hobbled towards us with a basket; somewhere, some distance off, was a heavier basket

that she couldn't carry. She was in a panic. She said to the driver: “Pas quittez moi a terre,” which is, in her patois: “Don’t leave me stranded,” which is, in her history and that of her people: 60

“Don’t leave me on earth,” or, by a shift of stress: “Don’t leave me the earth” [for an inheritance];

“Pas quittez moi a terre, Heavenly transport, Don’t leave me on earth, P've had enough of it.”

The bus filled in the dark with heavy shadows that would not be left on earth; no, that would be left on the earth, and would have to make out.

Abandonment was something they had grown used to. And I had abandoned them, I knew that there sitting in the transport, in the sea-quiet dusk, 70

with men hunched in canoes, and the orange lights from the Vigie® headland, black boats on the water;

I, who could never solidify my shadow to be one of their shadows, had left them their earth,

their white rum quarrels, and their coal bags, their hatred of corporals, of all authority. I was deeply in love with the woman by the window. I wanted to be going home with her this evening.

*Morris chairs: Large armchairs with adjustable backs and removable cushions, named after the English artist and poet William Morris (1834-1896).

° Christ of the Sacred Heart: Image depicting the exposed heart of Jesus encircled by either flames or thorns. Partly because of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque’s visions in the seventeenth century, the Roman Catholic Church approved the “enthronement” of this image in the home, symbolizing the sovereignty of Christ over the family.

°Vigie: See note 7 for “A Latin Primer.”

The Light of the World

80

I wanted her to have the key to our small house by the beach at Gros-Islet; 1 wanted her to change into a smooth white nightie that would pour like water over the black rocks of her breasts, to lie

simply beside her by the ring of a brass lamp with a kerosene wick, and tell her in silence

that her hair was like a hill forest at night, that a trickle of rivers was in her armpits,

that I would buy her Benin’ if she wanted it, and never leave her on earth. But the others, too. Because I felt a great love that could bring me to tears, 90

100

and a pity that prickled my eyes like a nettle, I was afraid I might suddenly start sobbing on the public transport with the Marley going, and a small boy peering over the shoulders of the driver and me at the lights coming, at the rush of the road in the country darkness, with lamps in the houses on the small hills, and thickets of stars; I had abandoned them, [had left them on earth, I left them to sing Marley’s songs of a sadness as real as the smell of rain on dry earth, or the smell of damp sand, and the bus felt warm with their neighbourliness, their consideration, and the polite partings

in the light of its headlamps. In the blare, in the thud-sobbing music, the claiming scent that came from their bodies. I wanted the transport to continue forever, for no one to descend and say a good night in the beams of the lamps and take the crooked path up to the lit door,

guided by fireflies; I wanted her beauty

to come into the warmth of considerate wood, 110

to the relieved rattling of enamel plates in the kitchen, and the tree in the yard, but I came to my stop. Outside the Halcyon Hotel. . The lounge would be full of transients like myself beach. the up surf the with Then I would walk I got off the van without saying good night. Good night would be full of inexpressible love.

left me on earth. They went on in their transport, they

for its art. Guinea; also a city in southern Nigeria known 7 Benin: West African nation on the Gulf of

1743

1744

DEREK WALCOTT

Then, a few yards ahead, the van stopped. A man shouted my name from the transport window. I walked up towards him. He held out something. A pack of cigarettes had dropped from my pocket. He gave it to me. I turned, hiding my tears. There was nothing they wanted, nothing I could give them but this thing I have called “The Light of the World”

120

Qw

For Pablo Neruda’ Tam not walking on sand, but I feel Iam walking on sand,

this poem is accompanying me on sand. Fungus lacing the rock, on the ribs, mould. Moss

feathering the mute roar of the staved-in throat

of the wreck, the crab gripping.

Why this loop of correspondences, as your voice grows hoarser than the chafed Pacific? Your voice falling soundless as snow on the petrified Andes, the snow

like feathers from the tilting rudderless condors,”

emissary in a black suit, who walks among eagles, hand, whose

five-knuckled peninsula bars the heartbreaking ocean? 20

Hear the ambassador of velvet open the felt-hinged door, the black flag flaps toothless

‘Pablo Neruda (1904-1973): Chilean poet who wrote about the effects of colonialism on the Americas; a number of his poems depict the oppression ofthe Indians. (See p. 1543.)

*condors: In a famous line in The Heights of Macchu Picchu, a collection of poems about the ancient Inca city of the title located high in the Andes, Neruda mentions condors, a bird with a wingspread of 12 feet common to the Andes.

For Pablo Neruda

over Isla Negra.° You said when others like me despaired: climb the moss-throated stairs to the crest of Macchu Picchu,’

break your teeth like a pick on the obdurate, mottled terraces, 30

wear the wind, soaked with rain like a cloak, above absences,

and for us, in the New World, our older world, you became a benign, rigorous uncle, and through you we fanned open to others, to the sand-rasped mutter of César Vallejo,’ to the radiant, self-circling

sunstone of Octavio,’ men who, unlike the Saxons,’ I am tempted 40

to call by their Christian names; we were all netted to one rock

by vines of iron, our livers picked by corbeaux and condors in the New World, in a new word, brotherhood, word which arrests

the crests of the snowblowing ocean in its flash to a sea of sierras, the round fish mouths of our children,

50

the word cantan.* All this you have done for me. Gracias.

e on the Pacific coast in Chile. When he was in residenc 31sla Negra: Pablo Neruda had a house in Isla Negra, there, he flew a flag. 4Macchu Picchu: See note 2.

larly interested in social change. 5 César Vallejo (1892-1938): Peruvian poet particu about the Mexican Prize winner from Mexico who often wrote © Octavio: Octavio Paz (1914-1998), a Nobel can

Sunstone poem “Sunstone” is a critique of Mexican apathy. search for identity in its Indian past; Paz’s long also refer to gold. centuries; the whom conquered England in the fifth and sixth 7 Saxons: Originally, a Germanic tribe, some of d and the English. term Anglo-Saxon usually refers to Englan “They sing.” or sing” 8 cantan: Spanish for “You (plural)

1745

Qs

ALIFA RIFAAT B. EGYPT, 1930

| www | For links to more information

about Alifa Rifaat

and a quiz on “My World of the Unknown,” see

bedfordstmartins .com/worldlit compact.

Contrary to the stereotype of submissive, veiled, and voiceless victims of a male-dominated society, Arab women have been amassing a considerable body of work in Arabic literature. Some of this writing takes a vigorous feminist stand on issues of women’s rights and women’s sexuality. One of the first feminist writers in Arabic literature was the poet Aisha alTaymuriyya (1840-1902), a member of the Turkish aristocracy in Egypt. Between 1892 and 1920 several journals focusing on and produced by women came out of Egypt and circulated throughout the Arabic world. In 1995, at the first Arab Women Book Fair, held in Cairo, more than 150

women writers participated from throughout the Arab world and more than 1,500 titles were on display by publishers. Among the principal Arabic feminists writing today are Hanan al-Shaykh (b. Lebanon, 1945); Ghada al-Samman (b. Syria, 1942); Fadia Faqir (b. Jordan, 1956); Alia Mamdouh (b. Iraq, 1944); Liana Badr (b. Palestine, 1952); and Nawal AH-lee-fah ree-FAHT

el-Saadawi (b. 1931) and Alifa Rifaat from Egypt. Through translations, al-Shaykh, el-Saadawi, and Rifaat in particular have received widespread attention and acclaim throughout the East and West, and the reception of their work has generated interest in and controversy over the role of women in the Arab world as well as the politics of literary reception in a global culture. The award-winning Rifaat has been recognized abroad and in Egypt as a gifted stylist and a controversial pioneer in writing about social conditions and sexual politics concerning Egyptian women.

Education and Marriage.

Fatma Abdulla Rifaat was born on June 5,

1930, in Cairo, into the family of a well-to-do architect, Abdulla, and his

wife, Zakia. Raised in the countryside where her family owned property, Fatma was a precocious child who demonstrated early her gift for writing. At the age of nine, she wrote a short story describing “despair in our village,” for which she was punished. After receiving her primary school diploma, Rifaat attended the British Institute in Cairo from 1946 to 1949.

Though she wanted to enroll in the College of Fine Arts at Cairo and go on to the university, her father, who believed that arts and literature would interfere with her duties as a wife and mother, refused her wishes and forced her to marry. Of that situation, Rifaat explains: “All decisions in our family are made by the menfolk; we are proud of our Arab origin and hold on to certain Arab customs, among which is the belief that the marriage of girls and their education remains the business of the man. The men taught us to be ladies in society and mistresses of the home only. As for the arts and literature, they were a waste of time and even forbidden.” After an eight-month unconsummated marriage with a mining engineer, in July 1952 Fatma married a cousin with the same surname,

Hussein Rifaat, a police officer with whom she had a daughter and two sons. Because Hussein’s work took him to several posts at a number of

1746

Alifa Rifaat, 1930

towns and villages, Rifaat, like the wife in “My World of the Unknown,” had the opportunity to observe Egyptian life in all its diversity.

1747

More convincingly than any other woman writing in

Reclaiming the Writer. Having experimented with oil painting and music, Rifaat returned to writing short stories, “a thing,” she explains, “that clashed with my marriage.” When her first story was published in

Arabic today, Alifa

1955, her husband “created a storm,” even though she had published her

to be a woman living

work under a pseudonym, Alifa Rifaat. She nevertheless continued to publish until 1960, when her husband demanded that she stop writing altogether. For more than a decade Rifaat complied, during which time

within a traditional

she avidly studied literature and read on Sufism, science, astronomy, and history. In about 1973, after she had suffered a long bout of illness, her

husband conceded that she might resume her writing. During that time of reclaiming her voice, Rifaat wrote “My World of the Unknown,’ a story that immediately garnered her both praise and blame for its treatment of the protagonist’s sexuality. Beginning in 1974, Rifaat published many short stories in the literary journal al-Thagafa al-usbwiya, followed by the collection of short stories Eve Returns with Adam to Paradise (1975) and the novel The Jewel of Pharo (1978). After her husband’s death in 1979

Rifaat met the British translator Denys Johnson-Davies, who, Rifaat explains, encouraged her to abandon some of the Romantic elements of her early work and to use colloquial language for dialogue. Several collections of her stories were published in the early 1980s, including Who Can

This Man Be? (1981), The Prayer of Love (1983), A House in the Land ofthe a Dead (1984), and Love Conspired on Me (1985). In 1983, Distant View of JohnsonDenys by translated and selected Minaret, a collection of stories

in Davies, among them “My World of the Unknown,” was published the won Rifaat 1984 In later. years two Arabic in appearing before English Excellence Award from the Modern Literature Assembly. She has contributed nearly one hundred short stories to Arabic and English magazines, radio and her work has been produced for British, Egyptian, and German 1995. in published was Baurdin of Girls novel Her and television. Awakening.

Unlike some of her contemporaries, such as el-Saadawi

on in her fiction. A and al-Shaykh, Rifaat draws primarily on Arab traditi Qur’an, and in the the book, holy Islamic the in devout Muslim well read she seeks to reconcile collected laws and traditions of Islam, the Hapitu, misinterpreted with been Islamic teachings, which she believes have

as recently as 1999, regard to women, with current practices. However, of the bookstore at shelves the from pulled Distant View of a Minaret was public morality and the American University in Cairo for offending tion of female explora injuring good taste. Critics oppose Rifaat’s frank a

“revolve around sexuality. “Most of my stories,” Rifaat has observed, life in marriage; sexual e complet and e woman’s right to a fully effectiv encountered by women that and the sexual and emotional problems own of my stories.” Her in marriages are the most important themes had been told nothing she marriage was initially unfulfilling because

Rifaat .. . lifts the veil on what it means

Muslim society. — Denys JOHNSONDavies, translator, 1983

1748

ALIFA RIFAAT

Alifa Rifaat’s revolt

about the act of making love. She adds, however, that Western models

falls far short of sug-

of sexual education and sexual liberation are inappropriate for Arab peoples, who have a strong commitment to Muslim religion and Arabic culture. “Our society,” she explains, “does not allow us to experience sex freely as Western women may. We have our traditions and our religion in which we believe.” In this story, Rifaat indeed does not express Western notions of libido but accounts for the narrator’s sexual awakening by way of Islamic myth and Arabic folk belief.

gesting that there be

any change in the traditional role of women in Muslim

society, and the last place she would look for inspiration for any change would be the Christian West. — DENys JOHNSON-

Davies, translator

“My World of the Unknown.” In Rifaat’s “My World of the Unknown,” the known world the narrator inhabits is that of middle-class, somewhat Westernized Egyptian women whose menfolk are thoroughly absorbed in the gray workaday world of urban bureaucracy and whose children are off at school, leaving them to occupy their days with supervising households. Though she says little about her life prior to the action of the story, it is apparent that the narrator’s wifely existence has left her feeling dry and depleted in body and soul. When her preoccupied husband is transferred to a post in the countryside, her subconscious stirs and directs her toward the mysterious house where the deeper needs of her imagination, her sexuality, and her spirit may be met. In the house on the canal, she feels alive and open to the natural world, and her whole

JIN

being is refreshed and quickened when she enters into a magical love affair with a beautiful female snake. The snake is apparently a djinn— one of a host of corporeal beings Allah created from smokeless fire who are said to live in a parallel universe to ours. Arab folklore abounds with tales of comings and goings between these worlds, and such encounters may be for good or for ill, since the djinn, like human beings, may be evil or helpful. In any case, to glimpse their world of the unknown alters a human being forever; such an experience seems to have driven Aneesa, the house’s previous occupant, into madness, and by the end of the story, when the husband clumsily destroys his wife’s idyll by killing one of the snake’s own kind, the narrator may be mad as well, for her whole life is

focused on the slim hope that she will be reunited with her snake lover. Like the supernatural world, human sexuality is at once a territory of great beauty and joy and, equally, of great risk. By daring to explore her own desires and by reaching out sexually and spiritually toward a very different —and female—being, the narrator invites danger and sorrow, but to have drawn back from the adventure would have meant continuing to live out a mechanical, meaningless existence. @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Ahmed, Leila. “Arab Culture and Writing Women’s Bodies.” Feminist Issues 12 (2):

4I-55. al-Ali, Nadje Sadig. Gender Writing/Writing Gender: The Representation of Women in a Selection ofModern Egyptian Literature. 1994.

Elkhadem, Saad. “The Representation of Women in Early Egyptian Fiction: A Survey.” The International Fiction Review 23 (1996): 76-90.

My World of the Unknown Olive, Barbara A. “Writing Women’s Bodies: A Study ofAlifa Rifaat’s Short Fiction.” The International Fiction Review 23 (1996): 44-50. Salti, Ramzi. “Feminism and Religion in Alifa Rifaat’s Short Stories.” The International Fiction Review 18.2 (1991): 108-12.

@

PRONUNCIATION

djinn: JIN Alifa Rifaat: AH-lee-fah ree-FAHT souk: SOOK

Qx

My World of the Unknown Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies

There are many mysteries in life, unseen powers in the universe, worlds other than our own, hidden links and radiations that draw creatures together and whose effect is interacting. They may merge or be incompatible, and perhaps the day will come when science will find a method for connecting up these worlds in the same way as it has made it possible to voyage to other planets. Who knows? Yet one of these other worlds I have explored; I have lived in it and been linked spe with its creatures through the bond of love. I used to pass with amazing between this tangible worldofours and another invisible e

same day, as though living it andthe oneon worlds When

mixing in the two

Site san

to entering into the world of my love, and being summoned and yielding

the call. for my husband to be Love had its beginning when an order came through his work, delegated to with busy too being transferred to a quiet country town and, ion prior to his takmodat accom e suitabl me the task of going to this town to choose named Kamil and inates subord his of one ing up the new appointment. He cabled me. assist to asked him to meet me at the station and I had had that night came I took the early morning train. The images of a dream d the distances between the towns to me as I looked out at the vast fields and gauge far it was between the new town how ned through which the train passed and recko +n which we were fated to liveand beloved Cairo. me, forcing themselves upon my _ The images of the dream kept reappearing to by a garden with bushes bearing mind: images of a small white house surrounded el

ee

1749

1750

EAS

RUEAVAG

yellow flowers, a house lying on the edge of a broad canal in which were swans and tall sailing boats. I kept on wondering at my dream and trying to analyse it: Perhaps _it was some secret wish I had had, or maybe the echo of some image that my uncon_ scious had stored up and was chewing over. As the train arrived at its destination, I awoke from my un I found Kamil awaiting me. We set out in his car, passing through the local souk.’ I gazed at the mounds of fruit with delight, chatting away happily with Kamil. When we emerged from the souk we found ourselves on the bank of the Mansoura canal, canal a on which swans swam and sailing boats moved to and fro. I kept staring at them with uneasy Tonging. Kamil directed the driver to the residential buildings the gover-

bank a large boat with a great fluttering sail glided oan Behind it could be seen a white house that had a garden with trees with yellow flowers and thatlay on its own amidst vast fields. Ishouted out in confusion, overcome 6 1e by the>feeling that Thad

en

=f

me OEM

:

been. here before. eS “Go to that house,” I called to the driver. Kamil leapt up, objecting vehemently: “No, no,

buildings.” I shouted insistently, like someone hypnotized: “I must have a look at that house.” “All right,” he said. “You won’t like it, though— it’s old and needs repairing.”

Giving in to my wish, he ordered the driver to make his way there. At the garden door we found a young woman, spare and of fair complexion. A fat child with ragged clothes encircled her neck with his burly legs. In a strange silence, she stood as though nailed to the ground, barring the door with her hands and looking at us with doltish enquiry. I took a sweet from my bag and handed it to the boy. He snatched it eagerly, tightening his grip on her neck with his podgy, mud-bespattered feet so that her face became flushed from his high-spirited embrace. A half-smile showed on her tightly closed lips. Taking courage, I addressed her in a friendly tone: “Id like to see over this house.” She braced her hands resolutely against the door. “No,” she said quite simply. I turned helplessly to Kamil, who went up to her and pushed her violently in the chest so that she staggered back. “Don’t you realize,” he shouted at her, “that this is the director’s wife? Off with you!” Lowering her head so that the child all but slipped from her, she walked off dejectedly to the canal bank where she lay down on the ground, put the child on her lap, and rested her head in her hands in silent submission.

Moved by pity, I remonstrated: “There’s no reason to be so rough, Mr. Kamil. _ Who is the woman?’ > “Some mad woman,’ he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “who's a stranger to the town. Out of kindness the owner of this house put her in : charge ofiit until someone should come along to live in it.”

‘souk: An outdoor market or bazaar.

My World of the Unknown

With increased interest I said: “Will he be asking a high rent for it?” “Not at all,” he said with an enigmatic smile. “He’d welcome anyone taking it over. There are no restrictions and the rent is modest —no more than four pounds.” I was beside myself with joy. Who in these days can find somewhere to live for such an amount? I rushed through the door into the house with Kamil behind me and went over the rooms: five spacious rooms with wooden floors, with a pleasant

hall, modern lavatory, and a beautifully roomy kitchen with a large verandah overlooking vast pistachio-green fields of generously watered rice. A breeze, limpid and cool, blew, playing with the tips of the crop and making the delicate leaves move in continuous dancing waves. I went back to the first room with its spacious balcony overlooking the road and revealing the other bank of the canal where, along its strand, extended the houses of the town. Kamil pointed out to me a building facing the house on the other side. “That’s where we work,” he said, “and behind it is where the children’s schools are.”

“Thanks be to God,” I said joyfully. “It means that everything is within easy

reach of this house—and the souk’s nearby too.” “Yes,” he said, “and the fishermen

will knock at your door to show you the fresh fish they’ve caught in their nets. But the house needs painting and re-doing, also there are all sorts of rumours about it—

the people around here believe in djinn’ andspirits.” ~

Hime

TUCe \HAget

for occupation.

had been carOn the date fixed I once again set off and found that all my wishes a cheerful painted rooms its ried out and that the house was pleasantly spruce with small into made and up tidied orange tinge, the floors well polished and the garden flowerbeds. to his business, havI took possession of the keys and Kamil went off to attend d the arrival of the awaite I while ing put a chair on the front balcony for me to sit on at the two banks gazed and furniture van. I stretched out contentedly in the chair passed the boats which n with their towering trees like two rows of guards betwee g a flotilla of headin swan male with their lofty sails, while around them glided a one after the_ them, with flirted females. Halfway across the canal he turned and

other likeasultan amidst hisharem._

a sort of created by Allah out of smokeless fire. They inhabit ? djinn: The djinn are intelligent corporeal beings They worlds. two the d Beover goings and s recounts coming parallel universe to ours, although Arabic folklore r s lover in this story does narrato the form; human in or animal an of may appear to human beings in the guise djinn. to the djinn. The English word genie is derived from both. One whole sura of the Qur’an is devoted

1751

1752

ALIFA RIFAAT

Relaxed, I closed my eyes. I projected myself into the future and pictured to myself the enjoyment I would have in this house after it had been put in order and the garden fixed up. I awoke to the touch of clammy fingers shaking me by the shoulders. I started and found myself staring at the fair-complexioned woman with her child squatting on her shoulders as she stood erect in front of me staring at me in silence. “What do you want?” I said to her sharply. “How did you get in?” “I got in with this,” she said simply, revealing a key between her fingers. I snatched the key from her hand as I loudly rebuked her: “Give it here. We have rented the house and you have no right to come into it like this.” “I have a lot of other keys,” she answered briefly. “And what,” I said to her, “do you want of this house?” “I

want to stay on in it and for you to go,” she said. I laughed in amazement at her words as I asked myself: Is she really mad? Finally I said impatiently: “Listen here, I’m not leaving here and youre not entering this house unless I wish it. My husband is coming with the children, and the furniture is on the way. He'll be arriving in a little while and we'll be living here for such period of time as my husband is required to work in this town.” She looked at me in a daze. For a long time she was silent, then she said: “All right, your husband will stay with me and you can go.”Despite my utter astonish-

ment I felt pity for her. “I'll allow you to stay on with us for the little boy’s sake,” I said to her gently, “until you find yourself another place. If youd like to help me with the housework I'll pay you what you ask.” Shaking her head, she said with strange emphasis: “I’m not a servant. 'm Aneesa.” “Youre not staying here,” I said to her coldly, rising to my feet. Collecting all my courage and emulating Kamil’s determination when he rebuked her, I began pushing her in the chest as I caught hold of the young boy’s hand. “Get out of here and don’t come near this house,” I shouted at her. “Let me have all the keys. I'll not let

go of your child till you've given them all to me.” With a set face that did not flicker she put her hand to her bosom and took outa ring on which were several keys, which she dropped into my hand. I released my grip on the young boy. Supporting him on her shoulders, she started to leave. Regretting my harshness, I took out several piastres from my bag and placed them in the boy’s hand. With the same silence and stiffness she wrested the piastres from the boy’s hand and gave them back to me. Then she went straight out. Bolting the door this time, I sat down, tense and upset, to wait.

My husband arrived, then the furniture, and for several days I occupied myself with putting the house in order. My husband was busy with his work and the children occupied themselves with making new friends and I completely forgot about Aneesa, that is until my husband returned one night wringing his hands with fury: ;

an Aneesa, can you imagine that since we came to live in this house she’s

_been hanging around it every night. Tonight she wasso crazy she blocked my way and. suggested I should send you off so that she might live with me. The woman’s gone completely off her head about this house and I’m afraid she might do something to the children or assault you.”

My World of the Unknown

Joking with him and masking the jealousy that raged within me, I said: “And what is there for you to get angry about? She’s a fair and attractive enough woman— a blessing brought to your very doorstep!” With a sneer he took up the telephone, muttering: “May God look after her!” He contacted the police and asked them to come and take her away. When I heard the sound of the police van coming I ran to the window and saw them taking her off, The poor woman did not resist, did not object, but submitted with a gentle sadness that as usual with her aroused one’s pity. Yet, when she saw me standing in tears and watching her, she turned to me and, pointing to the wall of the house, called out: “I'll leave her to you.” “Who?” I shouted. “Who, Aneesa?” Once again. pointing at the bottom.of the house, she said: “Her.” GB iivih alteaty Al eR The van took her off and I spent a sleepless night. No sooner did day come than [ hurried to the garden to examine my plants and to walk round the house and carefully inspect its walls. All 1 found were some cracks, the house being old, and I laughed at the frivolous thought that came to me: Could, for example, there be jew-

els buried here, as told in fairy tales? and ‘Who could “she” be? What was the secret of this house? Who was Aneesa

was she-really mad? Where were she and her sonliving? So great did my concern for

Aneesa become that I began pressing my husband with questions until he brought me news of her, The police had learnt that she was the wife of a well-to-do teacher in living in a nearby town. One night he had caught her in an act of infidelity, and had she why knowing one no here, fear she had fled with her son and had settled house had been betaken herself to this particular house. However, the owner of the

in it, good enough to allow her to put up in it until someone should come to live included name her have to behalf while some kind person had intervened on her Affairs. among those receiving monthly allowances from the Ministry of Social b her passing People : conduct her There were many rumours that cast doubt upon

took houseatnight would hear her conversing with unknown persons. Hermadness

during the daytime the form of a predilection for silence and isolation from people ed them to take persuad had police as she wandered about in a dream world. After the her relatives. to d returne was she her in to safeguard the good repute of her family,

n. Winter came and The days passed and the story of Aneesa was lost in oblivio hed though the flouris garden my in with it heavy downpours of rain. The vegetation pleasure in sitfind to came I fell. castor-oil plants withered and their yellow flowers and enjoying les vegetab and ting out on the kitchen balcony looking at my flowers y with balcon my d lavishe and the belts of sunbeams that lay between the clouds warmth and light. the limb of a nearby tree whose _ One sunny morning my attention was drawn to up and its dark bark being dried branches curved up gracefully despite its having turning along the tip of a and ng cracked. My gaze was attracted by something twisti bands of black, were with ed mingl branch: Bands of yellow and others of red, inter d head with two stripe small a ping forward. It was a long, smooth tube, at its end cree \ bright, wary eyes. SVR AK es btadr =~ \

1753

1754

ALIFA RIFAAT The snake curled round on itself in spiral rings, then tautened its body and moved forward. The sight gripped me; I felt terror turning my blood cold and freezing my limbs. My senses were numbed, mysoul intoxicated with a strange elation at the exciting beauty of the snake. I was rooted to the spot, wavering between two thoughts that contended in my mind at one and the same time: Should I snatch up some moment of r implement from the kitchen and kill the snake, or should Ienjoy the rare beauty that-had-been-afforded me? As though the snake had read what was passing through my mind, it raised its head, tilting it to right and left in thrilling coquetry. Then, by means of two tiny fangs |like pearls, andaa golden tongue like a twig | ofarak wood, it smiled at me m and left me. I felt a current, a radiation from its eyes that baited to my heart ordering me to stay where I was. A warning against continuing to sit out there in front of it surged inside me, but my attraction to it paralysed my limbs and | did not move. | I kept on watching it, utterly entranced and captivated. Like a bashful virgin being | lavished with compliments, it tried to conceal its pride in its beauty, and, having oxmade certain of captivating its lover, the snake coyly twisted round and gently, grace,fully glided away until swallowed up by a crack in the wall. Could the snake be the \ “she” that Aneesa had referred to on the day of her departure? _ t last I rose from my place, overwhelmed by the feeling that I was on the brink of a new world, a new destiny, or rather, if you wish, the threshold of a new love. I

threw myself onto the bed in a dreamlike state, unaware of the passage of time. No sooner, though, did I hear my husband’s voice and the children with their clatter as

they returned at noon than I regained my sense of being a human being, wary and frightened about itself, determined about the existence and continuance of its species. Without intending to I called out: “A snake—there’s a snake in the house.” My husband took up the telephone and some men came and searched the house. I pointed out to them the crack into which the snake had disappeared, though racked with a feeling of remorse at being guilty of betrayal. For here I was

"denouncing the beloved, inviting people p against it after ithad felt safe with me. The men f the snake. They burned some wormwood and fumigated the hole but without result. Then my husband summoned Sheikh Farid, Sheikh of the Rifa’iyya® order in the town, who went on chanting verses from the Qur’an as he tapped the ground with his stick. He then asked to speak to me alone and said: “Madam, the sovereign of the house has sought you out and what you saw is no snake, rather it is one of the monarchs of the earth—may God make your words pleasant to them—who has appeared to you in the form of a snake. Here in this house there are many holes of snakes, but they are of the non-poisonous kind. They inhabit houses and go and come as they please. What you saw, though, is somethinge

* Sheikh of the Rifa’iyya: The sheikh is the local head of a conservative Islamic order.

My World of the Unknown

“T don’t believe a word of it,” I said, stupefied. “This is nonsense. I know that the djinn are creatures that actually exist, but they are not in touch with our world, there is no contact between them and the world of humans.” With an enigmatic smile he said: “My child, the Prophet* went out to them and read the Qur’an to them in their country. Some of them are virtuous and some of them are Muslims, and how do you know there is no contact between us and them? Let your prayer be ‘O Lord, increase me in knowledge’ and do not be nervous. Your purity of spirit, your translucence of soul have opened to you doors that will take ‘yeu to other worlds known only to their Creator. Do not be afraid. Even if you

should find her one night-sleeping in your bed, do not be alarmed but talk to her Abeobs Taipornt with allpoliteness and friendliness.” “That’s enough of all that, Sheikh Farid. Thank you,” I said, alarmed, and he

left us. We went on discussing the matter. “Let’s be practical,” suggested my husband, “and stop all the cracks at the bottom of the outside walls and put wire-mesh over the windows, also paint wormwood all round the garden fence.” _ We set about putting into effect what we had agreed. I, though, no longer dared to go out onto the balconies. I neglected my garden and stopped wandering about in it. Generally I would spend my free time in bed. I changed to being someone who liked to sit around lazily and was disinclined to mix with people; those diversions and recreations that previously used to tempt me no longer gave me any pleasure. All Iwanted was to stretch myself out-and_drowse. In bewilderment I asked myself: ldake? Or could she rea lly be ITove-a-sn fwas in love? But how cou Could it-be-that

One ofthe daughters-of the monarchs of the djinn? Two

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fi

sings

magto find that [ had-been wandering in mythoughts and recalling to mind how that it Was myself. ask would I beauty? her of secret the is | nificent she was. And what \

I had been I was fascinated by her multi-coloured, supple body? Or was it that dit Or coul me? at looking of had she way ding dazzled by that intelligent, comman

of gliding along,so excitingly dangerous, that had captishe had be the sleek-way

Tae RiRNE sec Ie TabaNo

\——£xcitingly dangerous!

wie

doubt it was this excitement that had stirred my feel-

and frighten? There ings and awakened my love, for did they not make films to excite pation with her, preoccu my her, for passion my of was no doubt but that the secret intense fear, desire within was due to the excitement that had aroused, through

the blood hotly through myself; an excitement that was sufficiently strong to drive ng the blood in bursts my veins whenever the memory of her came to me, thrusti throwing myself down ina that made my heart beat wildly, my limbs limp. And so, awakened and I would wish pleasurable state of torpor, my craving for her would be

iV

. if for her coil-like touch, her graceful gliding motion \}

\

come about, how craving be And yet I fell to wondering how union could en a woman and a snake. And quenched, the delights of the body be realized, betwe idea would obtrude wondered, lovemeandwant.me as{lover NEEAn did she,L

L

(c. 570-632 c.k.), the founder of Islam. 4the Prophet: Muhammad

1755

1756

ALIFA RIFAAT itself upon me sometimes: Did Cleopatra, the very legend of love, have sexual intercourse with her serpent after having given up sleeping with men, having wearied of amorous adventures with them so that her sated instincts were no longer moved other than by the excitement of fear, her senses no longer aroused other than by bites from a snake? And the last of her lovers had been a viper that had destroyed her. I came to live ina state of continuous torment, for a strange feeling of longing — scorched my body and rent my senses, while my circumstances obliged me to carry _ out the duties and responsibilities that had been placed on me as the wife of a man who occupied an important position in the small town, he and his family being | objects of attention and his house a Kaaba’ for those seeking favours; also as a ' mother who must look after her children and concern herself with every detail of their lives so as to exercise control over them; there was also the house and its chores, this house that was inhabited by the mysterious lover who lived in a world other

—=f>

than mine. How, I wondered, was union between us to be achieved? Was wishing for

this love a sin or was there nothing to reproach myself about? te —— And as my self-questioning increased so did my yearning, my curiosity, my > desire. Was the snake from the world of reptiles or from the djinn? When would the meeting be? Was she, I wondered, aware of me and would she return out of pity for | my consuming passion? —, 1

—

One stormy morning with the rain pouring down so hard that I could hear the drops rattling on the window pane, | lit the stove and lay down in bed between the covers seeking refuge from an agonizing trembling that racked my yearning body which, ablaze with unquenchable desire, called out for relief. I heard a faint rustling sound coming from the corner of the wall right beside my bed. I looked down and kept my eyes fixed on one of the holes in the wall, which I found was slowly, very slowly, expanding. Closing my eyes, my heart raced with joy and my body throbbed with mounting desire as there dawned in me the hope of an encounter. I lay back in submission to what was to be. No longer did I care whether love was coming from the world of reptiles or from that of the djinn, sovereigns of the world. Even were this love to mean my destruction, my desire for it was greater.

pa I heard a hissing noise that drew nearer, then it changed to a gentle whispering ; in my ear, calling to me: “I am love, O enchantress. I showed you my home in your sleep; I called you to my kingdom when your soul was dozing on the horizon of |

dreams, so come, my sweet beloved, come and let us explore the depths of the azure sea of pleasure. There, in the chamber of coral, amidst cool, shady rocks where

| reigns deep, restful silence lies our bed, lined with soft, bright green damask, inlaid __ with pearls newly wrenched from their shells. Come, let me sleep with you as I have \ } slept with beautiful women and have given them bliss. Come, let me prise out your

* Kaaba: Metaphorically, the house is a pilgrimage site; the Kaaba is the small cubical building within the Great Mosque at Mecca that houses the Black Stone, the holiest relic in Islam. Muslims worldwide face toward the Kaaba when they pray.

My World of the Unknown

pearl from its shell that I may polish it and bring forth its splendour. Come to where _no one will find us, where no-one willsee us, for the eyes of swimming creatures are innocent and will not heed what we do nor understand what we say. Down there lies repose, lies a cure for all your yearnings and ills. Come, without fear or dread, for no creature will reach us in our hidden world, and only the eye of God alone will see us; He alone will know what we are about and He will watch over us.” more important than ever to set down the story P've been carrying around unwritten for so long, the story of

unintentional but prophetic with med— Aya and the gentle man whom she rena it is not just their story, but that now see I courter. overtones of romance— “the

ours, mine, as well.

3 it had invisible His real name was Mecir: You were supposed to say Mishirsh because to be invisible, had accents on it in some Iron Curtain language in which the accents them out rubbed or my sister Durré said solemnly, in case somebody spied on them what we of full so was or something. His first name also began with an m but it withtogether up walled called Communist consonants, all those z’s and c’s and w’s it. learn to tried out vowels to give them breathing space, that I never even little comic-book At first we thought of nicknaming him after a mischievous

who looked a bit like Elmer character, Mr. Mxyztplk from the Fifth Dimension,

could trick him into sayFudd and used to make Superman’ life hell until ole Supe back into the Fifth eared ing his name backwards, Klptzyxm, whereupon he disapp (not to mention lk Mxyztp say Dimension; but because we weren't too sure how to told him in the I Up,” MixedKlptzyxm) we dropped that idea. “We'll just call you and bursting then fifteen was I end, to simplify life. “Mishter Mikshet Up people’s into right that like things with unemployed cock and it meant I could say stroke. his with faces, even people less accommodating than Mr. Mecir

2

r washing-up gloves, which he What I remember most vividly are his pink rubbe calling for Certainly-Mary ... At seemed never to remove, at least not until he came Durré and Muneeza cackling in the any rate, when I insulted him, with my sisters grin, nodded, “You call me what you lift, Mecir just grinned an empty good-natured polishing the brasswork. There was no like; okay,’ and went back to buffing and that, so I got into the lift and all the point teasing him if he was going to be like Loving You at the top of our best Ray way to the fourth floor we sang I Can't Stop it But we were wearing our dark glasses, so Charles voices, which were pretty awful. didn’t matter.

1765

1766

SALMAN

RUSHDIE

4 It was the summer of 1962, and school was out. My baby sister Scheherazade was just one year old. Durré was a beehived fourteen; Muneeza was ten, and already quite a handful. The three of us—or rather Durré and me, with Muneeza trying desperately and unsuccessfully to be included in our gang—would stand over Scheherazade’s cot and sing to her. “No nursery rhymes,” Durré had decreed, and so there were none, for though she was a year my junior she was a natural leader. The infant Scheherazade’s lullabies were our cover versions of recent hits by Chubby Checker, Neil Sedaka, Elvis, and Pat Boone.

“Why don’t you come home, Speedy Gonzales?” we bellowed in sweet disharmony: But most of all, and with actions, we would jump down, turn around, and

pick a bale of cotton. We would have jumped down, turned around, and picked those bales all day except that the Maharaja of B in the flat below complained, and Aya Mary came in to plead with us to be quiet. “Look, see, it’s Jumble-Aya who’s fallen for Mixed-Up,” Durré shouted, and

Mary blushed a truly immense blush. So naturally we segued right into a quick meoh-my-oh; son of a gun, we had big fun. But then the baby began to yell, my father came in with his head down bull-fashion and steaming from both ears, and we

needed all the good-luck charms we could find. I had been at boarding school in England for a year or so when Abba took the decision to bring the family over. Like all his decisions, it was neither explained to nor discussed with anyone, not even my mother. When they first arrived he rented two adjacent flats in a seedy Bayswater mansion block called Graham Court, which lurked furtively in a nothing street that crawled along the side of the ABC Queensway cinema towards the Porchester Baths. He commandeered one of these flats for himself and put my mother, three sisters, and Aya in the other; also, on school holidays, me. England, where liquor was freely available, did little for my father’s bonhomie, so in a way it was a relief to have a flat to ourselves.

Most nights he emptied a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label and a sodasiphon. My mother did not dare to go across to “his place” in the evenings. She said: “He makes faces at me.” Aya Mary took Abba his dinner and answered all his calls (if he wanted anything, he would phone us up and ask for it). Iam not sure why Mary was spared his drunken rages. She said it was because she was nine years his senior, so she could tell him to show due respect. After a few months, however, my father leased a three-bedroom fourth-floor

apartment with a fancy address. This was Waverley House in Kensington Court, W8. Among its other residents were not one but two Indian Maharajas, the sporting Prince P as well as the old B—— who has already been mentioned. Now we were jammed in together, my parents and Baby Scare-zade (as her siblings had affectionately begun to call her) in the master bedroom, the three of us ina much smaller room, and Mary, I regret to admit, on a straw mat laid on the fitted carpet in the hall. The third bedroom became my father’s office, where he made phone calls and

The Courter

kept his Encyclopaedia Britannica, his Reader’s Digests, and (under lock and key) the television cabinet. We entered it at our peril. It was the Minotaur’s® lair. One morning he was persuaded to drop in at the corner pharmacy and pick up some supplies for the baby. When he returned there was a hurt, schoolboyish look on his face that I had never seen before, and he was pressing his hand against his cheek. “She hit me,” he said plaintively. “Hai! Allah-tobah!’ Darling!” cried my mother, fussing. “Who hit you? Are you injured? Show me, let me see.” “T did nothing,” he said, standing there in the hall with the pharmacy bag in his other hand and a face as pink as Mecir’s rubber gloves. “I just went in with your list. The girl seemed very helpful. I asked for baby compound, Johnson’s powder, teething jelly, and she brought them out. Then I asked did she have any nipples, and

she slapped my face.” My mother was appalled. “Just for that?” And Certainly-Mary backed her up. “What is this nonsense?” she wanted to know. “I have been in that chemist’s shock, and they have flenty nickels, different sizes, all on view.”

Durré and Muneeza could not contain themselves. They were rolling round on the floor, laughing and kicking their legs in the air. “You both shut your face at once,” my mother ordered. “A madwoman has hit your father. Where is the comedy?” “T don't believe it” Durré gasped. “You just went up to that girl and said,” and got here she fell apart again, stamping her feet and holding her stomach, “‘have you any nipples?” Abba,” My father grew thunderous, empurpled. Durré controlled herself. “But she said, at length, “here they call them teats.” my father Now my mother’s and Mary’s hands flew to their mouths, and even as for word looked shocked. “But how shameless!” my mother said. “The same her tongue for shame. what’s on your bosoms?” She coloured, and stuck out

Certainly“These English,” sighed Certainly-Mary. “But aren’t they the limit? yes; they are.” time I ever saw my I remember this story with delight, because it was the only girl in the pharthe and father so discomfited, and the incident became legendary I went in there and (Durre macy was installed as the object of our great veneration. with large, en, about sevente just to take a look at her—she was a plain, short girl of y that we fiercel so and glared unavoidable breasts —but she caught us whispering g truth shamin the to conceal fled.}-And also because in the general hilarity I was able e as mistak same the have made that I, who had been in England for so long, would Abba did.

the labyrinth creature, half bull and half man, at the center of 6 Minotaur: In Greek mythology, the threatening in Crete who is slain by Theseus.

7 Allah-tobah!: Oh my God!

1767

1768

SALMAN

RUSHDIE

It wasn’t just Certainly-Mary and my parents who had trouble with the English language. My schoolfellows tittered when in my Bombay way I said “brought-up” for upbringing (as in “where was your brought-up?”) and “thrice” for three times and “quarter-plate” for side-plate and “macaroni” for pasta in general. As for learning the difference between nipples and teats, I really hadn't had any opportunities to increase my word power in that area at all.

5

yok

* 2

So I was a little jealous of Certainly-Mary when Mixed-Up came to call. He rang our bell, his body quivering with deference in an old suit grown too loose, the trousers tightly gathered by a belt; he had Anee Bee eae and there were roses in his hand. My father opened the door and gave him a withering look. Being a snob, Abba was not pleased that the flat lacked a separate service entrance, so that even a

porter had to be treated as a member of the same universe as himself. “Mary,” Mixed-Up managed, licking his lips and pushing back his floppy white hair. “I, to see Miss Mary, come, am.” “Wait on,’ Abba said, and shut the door in his face.

Certainly-Mary spent all her afternoons off with old Mixed-Up from then on, even though that first date was not a complete success. He took her “up West” to show her the visitors’ London she had never seen, but at the top of an up escalator at Piccadilly Circus, while Mecir was painfully enunciating the words on the posters she couldn’t read— Unzip a banana, and Idris when I’s dri—she got her sari stuck in the jaws of the machine, and as the escalator pulled at the garment it began to unwind. She was forced to spin round and round like a top, and screamed at the top of her voice, “O BAAP! BAAPU-RE! BAAP-RE-BAAP-RE-BAAP!”* It was Mixed-Up who saved her by pushing the emergency stop button before the sari was completely unwound and she was exposed in her petticoat for all the world to see. “O, courter!” she wept on his shoulder. “O, no more escaleater, courter, nevermore, surely not!”

My own amorous longings were aimed at Durré’s

t frien

ish

girl called

Rozalia, who had a holiday job at Faiman’s shoe shop on Oxford Street. I pursued her pathetically throughout the holidays and, on and off, for the next two years. She would let me have lunch with her sometimes and buy her a Coke and a sandwich, and once she came with me to stand on the terraces at White Hart Lane’ to watch Jimmy Greaves’s first game for the Spurs. “Come on you whoi-oites,’ we both shouted dutifully. “Come on you Lily-whoites.” After that she even invited me into the back room at Faiman’s, where she kissed me twice and let me touch her breast,

but that was as far as I got. 8“O BAAP! ... BAAP!”: An expression of embarrassment; “Oh God!”

° White Hart Lane: The home stadium in London of the professional soccer team the Tottenham Hot Spurs. Jimmy Greaves was one of the Spurs’ star players.

The Courter

And then there was my sort-of-cousin Chandni, whose mother’s sister had mar-

ried my mother’s brother, though they had since split up. Chandni was eighteen months older than me, and so sexy it made you sick. She was training to be an Indian classical dancer, Odissi as well as Natyam,’’ but in the meantime she dressed in tight black jeans and a clinging black polo-neck jumper and took me, now and then, to hang out at Bunjie’s, where she knew most of the folk-music crowd that frequented the place, and where she answered to the name of Moonlight, which is what chandnj means. I chain-smoked with the folkies and then went to the toilet to throw up. Chandni was the stuff of obsessions. She was a teenage dream, the Moon River

come to Earth like the Goddess Ganga," dolled up in slinky just the young greenhorn cousin to whom she was being learned his way around. She-E-rry, won't you come out tonight? yodelled the Four how they felt. Come, come, come out toni-yi-yight. And while

black. But for her I was nice because he hadn’t Seasons. I knew exactly youre at it, love me do.

6 They went for walks in Kensington Gardens. “Pan,” Mixed-Up said, pointing at a statue. “Los boy. Nev’ grew up.””* They went to Barkers and Pontings and Derry & Toms" and picked out furniture and curtains for imaginary homes. They cruised supermarkets and chose little delicacies to eat. In Mecir’s cramped lounge they sipped what he called “chimpanzee tea”'* and toasted crumpets in front of an electric bar fire.

Thanks to Mixed-Up, Mary was at last able to watch television. She liked children’s programmes best, especially The Flintstones. Once, giggling at her daring, Mary confided to Mixed-Up that Fred and Wilma reminded her of her Sahib and Begum Sahiba upstairs; at which the courter, matching her audaciousness, pointed first at Certainly-Mary and then at himself, grinned a wide gappy smile and said, “Rubble.” Later, on the news, a vulpine Englishman with a thin moustache and mad eyes declaimed a warning about immigrants, and Certainly-Mary flapped her hand at the set: “Khali-pili bom marta,” she objected, and then, for her host’s benefit translated: “For nothing he is shouting shouting. Bad life! Switch it off.” , who and P They were often interrupted by the Maharajas of and B in call-box the from came downstairs to escape their wives and ring other women the porter’s room. the east coast of India. Natyam is one 1 Odissi . . . Natyam: Odissi is the traditional dance ofOrissa, a state on India. southern of the oldest dance forms in " Goddess Ganga: The Hindu goddess of the sacred Ganga River. celebrates James Barrie’s tale of the lost «Pan... grew up”: A statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens boy who never grew up, Peter Pan.

13 Barkers . . . Toms: Fashionable London stores.

brand of English tea featured chimpanzees 14«chimpanzee tea”: The television advertisements for a popular dressed as humans.

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, who seemed to spend all “Oh, baby, forget that guy,” said sporty Prince P almost lost in the thick was Rolex gold plump whose and whites, tennis in days his into my world.” step baby; him, than time better a you show “I'll arm. his hair on The Maharaja of B——

was older, uglier, more matter-of-fact. “Yes, bring all

appliances. Room is booked in name of Mr. Douglas Home. Six forty-five to seven fifteen. You have printed rate card? Please. Also a two-foot ruler, must be wooden.

Frilly apron, plus.” This is what has lasted in my memory of Waverley House, this seething mass of bad marriages, booze, philanderers, and unfulfilled young lusts; of the Maharaja of ip roaring away towards London’s casinoland every night, in a red sports car with fitted blondes, and of the Maharaja of B skulking off to Kensington High Street wearing dark glasses in the dark, and a coat with the collar turned up even though it was high summer; and at the heart of our little universe were CertainlyMary and her courter, drinking chimpanzee tea and singing along with the national anthem of Bedrock. But they were not really like Barney and Betty Rubble at all. They were formal, polite. They were . . . courtly. He courted her, and, like a coy, ringleted ingénue with a fan, she inclined her head, and entertained his suit.

7 I spent one half-term weekend in 1963 at the home in Beccles, Suffolk of Field Mar-

He was a huge man whose skin had started hanging too loosely on his face, a giant living in a tiny thatched cottage and forever bumping his head. No wonder he was irascible at times; he was in Hell, a Gulliver trapped in that rose-garden Lilliput'® of croquet hoops, church bells, sepia photographs, and old battle-trumpets. The weekend was fitful and awkward until the Dodo asked if I played chess. Slightly awestruck at the prospect of playing a Field Marshal, I nodded; and ninety minutes later, to my amazement, won the game. I went into the kitchen, strutting somewhat, planning to boast a little to the old soldier’s long-time housekeeper, Mrs. Liddell. But as soon as I entered she said:

“Don’t tell me. You never went and won?” “Yes, Isaid, affecting nonchalance. “As a matter of fact, yes, I did.”

* Dodgson . . . “The Dodo”: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was the given name of Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), author of Alice in Wonderland, a novel he based on a story he told to Alice Liddell and her sisters. The Dodo, a character in the story, is said to be Carroll’s projection of himself. The author could not pronounce his given name without stuttering. Gulliver . . . Lilliput: On the first of his voyages in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Gulliver visits

Lilliput, a land whose inhabitants are tiny human beings.

The Courter

“Gawd,” said Mrs. Liddell. “Now there'll be hell to pay. You go back in there and ask him for another game, and this time make sure you lose.”

I did as I was told, but was never invited to Beccles again. Still, the defeat of the Dodo gave me new confidence at the chessboard, so when I returned to Waverley House after finishing my O levels,'’ and was at once invited to play a game by Mixed-Up (Mary had told him about my victory in the Battle of Beccles with great pride and some hyperbole), I said: “Sure, I don’t mind.” How long could it take to thrash the old duffer, after all? There followed a massacre royal. Mixed-Up did not just beat me; he had me for breakfast, over easy. I couldn’t believe it—the canny opening, the fluency of his combination play, the force of his attacks, my own impossibly cramped, strangled positions—and asked for a second game. This time he tucked into me even more heartily. I sat broken in my chair at the end, close to tears. Big girls don’t cry, I reminded myself, but the song went on playing in my head: That’s just an alibi. “Who are you?” I demanded, humiliation weighing down every syllable. “The devil in disguise?” Mixed-Up gave his big, silly grin. “Grand Master,” he said. “Long time. Before head.” “Youre a Grand Master,” I repeated, still in a daze. Then in a moment of horror I

remembered that I had seen the name Mecir in books of classic games. “NimzoIndian,” I said aloud. He beamed and nodded furiously. we “That Mecir?” I asked wonderingly. - “That,” he said. There was saliva dribbling out of a corner of his sloppy old mouth. This ruined old man was in the books. He was in the books. And even with his mind turned to rubble he could still wipe the floor with me. “Now play lady,” he grinned. I didn’t get it. “Mary lady,” he said. “Yes yes certainly.” She was pouring tea, waiting for my answer. “Aya, you can't play,” I said,

bewildered. “Learning, baba,” she said. “What is it, na? Only a game.”

And then she, too, beat me senseless, and with the black pieces, at that. It was not

the greatest day of my life.

8 From 100 Most Instructive Chess Games by Robert Reshevsky, 1961: M. Mecir—M. Najdorf Dallas 1950, Nimzo-Indian Defense — that of a strategist even The attack of a tactician can be troublesome to meet

strategist confuses more so. Whereas the tactician’s threats may be unmistakable, the

the issue by keeping things in abeyance. He threatens to threaten!

education to establish eligibility for a 7 levels: Exams given at the end of an “ordinary-level” secondary diploma.

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Take this game for instance: Mecir posts a Knight at Q6 to get a grip on the center. Then he establishes a passed Pawn on one wing to occupy his opponent on the Queen side. Finally he stirs up the position on the King-side. What does the poor bewildered opponent do? How can he defend everything at once? Where will the blow fall? Watch Mecir keep Najdorf on the run, as he shifts the attack from side to side!

Chess had become their private language. Old Mixed-Up, lost as he was for words, retained, on the chessboard, much of the articulacy and subtlety which had vanished from his speech. As Certainly-Mary gained in skill—and she had learned with astonishing speed, I thought bitterly, for someone who couldn't read or write or pronounce the letter p—she was better able to understand, and respond to, the wit of the reduced maestro with whom she had so unexpectedly forged a bond. He taught her with great patience, showing-not-telling, repeating openings and combinations and endgame techniques over and over until she began to see the meaning in the patterns. When they played, he handicapped himself, he told her her best moves and demonstrated their consequences, drawing her, step by step, into the infinite possibilities of the game. Such was their courtship. “It is like an adventure, baba,’ Mary once tried to explain to me. “It is like going with him to his country, you know? What a place, baap-ré! Beautiful and dangerous and funny and full of fuzzles. For me it is a big-big discovery. What to tell you? I go for the game. It is a wonder.” I understood, then, how far things had gone between them. Certainly-Mary had never married, and had made it clear to old Mixed-Up that it was too late to start any of that monkey business at her age. The courter was a widower, and had grown-up children somewhere, lost long ago behind the ever-higher walls of Eastern Europe. But in the game of chess they had found foun a form of flirtation, an endless renewal that

precluded the possibility of boredom, a a courtly’ wonderland of theaging a heart. “What would the Dodo have made of it all? No doubt it would have scandalised him to see chess, chess of all games, the great formalisation of war, transformed into

an art of love. As for me: My defeats by Certainly-Mary and her courter ushered in further humiliations. Durré and Muneeza went down with the mumps, and so, finally, in spite of my mother’s efforts to segregate us, did I. I lay terrified in bed while the doctor warned me not to stand up and move around if I could possibly help it. “If you do,” he said, “your parents won't need to punish you. You will have punished yourself quite enough.” I spent the following few weeks tormented day and night by visions of grotesquely swollen testicles and a subsequent life of limp impotence—finished before I'd even started, it wasn’t fair!— which were made much worse by my sisters’ quick recovery and incessant gibes. But in the end I was lucky; the illness didn’t spread to the deep

South. “Think how happy your hundred and one girlfriends will be, bhai,’ sneered

18 bhai: Brother.

The Courter

Durré, who knew all about my continued failures in the Rozalia and Chandni departments. On the radio, people were always singing about the joys of being sixteen years

old. I wondered where they were, all those boys and girls of my agehaving the time of their lives. Were they driving around America in Studebaker convertibles? They certainly weren't in my neighbourhood. London, W8 was Sam Cooke country that summer. Another Saturday night...There might be a mop-top love-song stuck at number one, but I was down with lonely Sam in the lower depths of the charts, how-I-wishing I had someone, etc., and generally feeling in a pretty goddamn dreadful way.

9 “Baba, come quick.” It was late at night when Aya Mary shook me awake. After many urgent hisses, she managed to drag me out of sleep and pull me, pajama’ed and yawning, down the hall. On the landing outside our flat was Mixed-Up the courter, huddled up against a wall, weeping. He had a black eye and there was dried blood on his mouth. “What happened?” I asked Mary, shocked. “Men,” wailed Mixed-Up. “Threaten. Beat.”

He had been in his lounge earlier that evening when the sporting Maharaja of burst in to say, “If anybody comes looking for me, okay, any tough-guy type P guys, okay, I am out, okay? Oh you tea. Don’t let them go upstairs, okay? Big tip, okay?” also arrived in Mecir’s lounge, A short time later, the old Maharaja of B looking distressed. “Suno, listen on,” said the Maharaja of B——. “You don’t know where | am, samajh liya?'? Understood? Some low persons may inquire. You don't know. I am abroad, achha?”’ On extended travels abroad. Do your job, porter. Handsome

recompense.” Late at night two tough-guy types did indeed turn up. It seemed the hairy Prince had gambling debts. “Out,’ Mixed-Up grinned in his sweetest way. The B tough-guy types nodded, slowly. They had long hair and thick lips like Mick Jagger’s. “He’s a busy gent. We should of made an appointment,’ said the first type to the second. “Didn't I tell you we should of called?” “You did,” agreed the second type. “Got to do these things right, you said, he’s my royalty. And you was right, my son, I put my hand up, I was dead wrong. I put hand up to that.” “T et’s leave our card,” said the first type. “Then he’ll know to expect us.” “Ideal,” said the second type, and smashed his fist into old Mixed-Up’s mouth.

the eye. “When he’s “You tell him,” the second type said, and struck the old man in

in. You mention it.”

1? samajh liya?: Do you understand?

?0achha?: Yeah?

1773

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SALMAN RUSHDIE He had locked the front door after that; but much later, well after midnight,

there was a hammering. Mixed-Up called out, “Who?” ” said a voice. “No, I tell a lie. “We are close friends of the Maharaja of B Acquaintances.” “He calls upon a lady of our acquaintance,” said a second voice. “To be precise.” “Tt is in that connection that we crave audience,” said the first voice. “Gone,” said Mecir. “Jet plane. Gone.”

There was a silence. Then the second voice said, “Can't be in the jet set if you never jump on a jet, eh? Biarritz, Monte, all of that.” “Be sure and let His Highness know,” said the first voice, “that we eagerly await his return.” “With regard to our mutual friend,” said the second voice. “Eagerly.”

What does the poor bewildered opponent do? The words from the chess book popped unbidden into my head. How can he defend everything at once? Where will the blow fall? Watch Mecir keep Najdorf on the run, as he shifts the attack from side to side! Mixed-Up returned to his lounge and on this occasion, even though there had been no use of force, he began to weep. After a time he took the elevator up to the fourth floor and whispered through our letter-box to Certainly-Mary sleeping on her mat. “T didn’t want to wake Sahib,” Mary said. “You know his trouble, na? And Begum Sahiba is so tired at end of the day. So now you tell, baba, what to do?” What did she expect me to come up with? I was sixteen years old. “Mixed-Up must call the police,” I unoriginally offered. “No, no, baba,” said Certainly-Mary emphatically. “If the courter makes a scandal for Maharaja-log, then in the end it is the courter only who will be out on his ear.” I had no other ideas. I stood before them feeling like a fool, while they both turned upon me their frightened, supplicant eyes. “Go to sleep,” I said. “We'll think about it in the morning.” The first pair of thugs Pere tacticians, | was thinking. They were troublesome to meet. But the second par (| were scarier; they were strategists. They threatened to threaten. Nothing happened in the morning, and the sky was clear. It was almost impossible to believe in fists, and menacing voices at the door. During the course of the day both Maharajas visited the porter’s lounge and stuck five-pound notes in MixedUp’s waistcoat pocket. “Held the fort, good man,” said Prince P , and the Maharaja of B

echoed those sentiments: “Spot on. All handled now, achha?

Problem over.” The three of us—Aya Mary, her courter, and me—held a council of war that afternoon and decided that no further action was necessary. The hall porter was the front line in any such situation, I argued, and the front line had held. And now the risks were past. Assurances had been given. End of story. “End of story,’ repeated Certainly-Mary doubtfully, but then, seeking to reassure Mecir, she brightened. “Correct,” she said. “Most certainly! All-done, finis.”

The Courter

She slapped her hands against each other for emphasis. She asked Mixed-Up if he wanted a game of chess; but for once the courter didn’t want to play. 10

After that I was distracted, for a time, from the story of Mixed-Up and Certainly-

Mary by violence nearer home. My middle sister Muneeza, now eleven, was entering her delinquent phase a little early. She was the true inheritor of my father’s black rage, and when she lost control it was terrible to behold. That summer she seemed to pick fights with my father on purpose; seemed prepared, at her young age, to test her strength against his. (I intervened in her rows with Abba only once, in the kitchen. She grabbed the kitchen scissors and flung them at me. They cut me on the thigh. After that I kept my distance.) As I witnessed their wars I felt myself coming unstuck from the idea of family itself. I looked at my screaming sister and thought how brilliantly self-destructive she was, how triumphantly she was ruining her relations with the people she needed most. And I looked at my choleric, face-pulling father and thought about British citizenship. My existing Indian passport permitted me to travel only to a very few countries, which were carefully listed on the second right-hand page. But I might soon have a British passport and then, by hook or by crook, I would get away from him. I would not have this face-pulling in my life. At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren't listening to his voice speaking through your mouth, you don't see how your gestures already mirror his; you don’t see him in the way you hold your body, in the way you sign your name. You don't hear his whisper in your blood.

On the day I have to tell you about, my two-year-old sister Chhoti Scheherazade, Little Scare-zade, started crying as she often did during one of our family rows. Amma and Aya Mary loaded her into her push-chair and made a rapid getaway. They pushed her to Kensington Square and then sat on the grass, turned Scheherazade loose and made philosophical remarks while she tired herself out. Finally, she fell asleep, and they made their way home in the fading light of the evening. Outside Waverley House they were approached by two well-turned-out young men with Beatle haircuts and the buttoned-up, collarless jackets made popular by the band. the The first of these young men asked my mother, very politely, if she might be J Maharani of B “No,” my mother answered, flattered.

are “Oh, but you are, madam,” said the second Beatle, equally politely. “For you .” residence of place ’s heading for Waverley House and that is the Maharaja t Indian “No, no,” my mother said, still blushing with pleasure. “We are a differen family.” my mother’s “Quite so,’ the first Beatle nodded understandingly, and then, to eh. Mum’s ito, “Incogn winked. and great surprise, placed a finger alongside his nose, the word.”

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“Now excuse us,” my mother said, losing patience. “We are not the ladies you seek.” The second Beatle tapped a foot lightly against a wheel of the push-chair. “Your husband seeks ladies, madam, were you aware of that fact? Yes, he does. Most assidu-

ously, may I add.” “Too assiduously,” said the first Beatle, his face darkening. “I tell you I am not the Maharani Begum,” my mother said, growing suddenly alarmed. “Her business is not my business. Kindly let me pass.” The second Beatle stepped closer to her. She could feel his breath, which was minty. “One of the ladies he sought out was our ward, as you might say,’ he explained. “That would be the term. Under our protection, you follow. Us, therefore, being responsible for her welfare.” “Your husband,’ said the first Beatle, showing his teeth in a frightening way, and raising his voice one notch, “damaged the goods. Do you hear me, Queenie? He damaged the fucking goods.” “Mistaken identity, fleas,” said Certainly-Mary. “Many Indian residents in Waverley House. We are decent ladies; fleas.” The second Beatle had taken out something from an inside pocket. A blade caught the light. “Fucking wogs,” he said. “You fucking come over here, you don’t fucking know how to fucking behave. Why don’t you fucking fuck off to fucking Wogistan? Fuck your fucking wog arses. Now then,” he added in a quiet voice, holding up the knife, “unbutton your blouses.” Just then a loud noise emanated from the doorway of Waverley House. The two women and the two men turned to look, and out came Mixed-Up, yelling at the top of his voice and windmilling his arms like a mad old loon. “Hullo,” said the Beatle with the knife, looking amused. “Who’s this, then? Oh

oh fucking seven?” Mixed-Up was trying to speak, he was in a mighty agony of effort, but all that was coming out of his mouth was raw, unshaped noise. Scheherazade woke up and joined in. The two Beatles looked displeased. But then something happened inside old Mixed-Up; something popped, and in a great rush he gabbled, “Sirs sirs no sirs these not B——— women sirs B women upstairs on floor three sirs Maharaja of B also sirs God’s truth mother’s grave swear.” (c It was the longest sentence he had spoken since the stroke that had broken his tongue long ago. And what with his torrent and Scheherazade’s squalls there were suddenly heads poking out from doorways, attention was being paid, and the two Beatles nodded gravely. “Honest mistake,” the first of them said apologetically to my mother, and actually bowed from the waist. “Could happen to anyone,” the knife-man added, ruefully. They turned and began to walk quickly away. As they passed Mecir, however, they paused. “I know you, though,” said the knife-man. “‘Jet plane. Gone.” He made a short movement of the arm, and then Mixed-Up the courter was lying on the pavement with blood leaking from a wound in his stomach. “All okay now,” he gasped, and passed out.

The Courter

11

He was on the road to recovery by Christmas; my mother’s letter to the landlords, in which she called him a “knight in shining armour,” ensured that he was well looked

after, and his job was kept open for him. He continued to live in his little ground-floor cubbyhole, while the hall porter’s duties were carried out by shift-duty staff. “Nothing but the best for our very own hero,” the landlords assured my mother in their reply. The two Maharajas and their retinues had moved out before | came home for the Christmas holidays, so we had no further visits from the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Certainly-Mary spent as much time as she could with Mecir; but it was the look of my old Aya that worried me more than poor Mixed-Up. She looked older, rarid powdery, as if she might crumble away at any moment into dust. v “We didn’t want to worry you at school,” my mother said. “She has been having\, )) heart trouble. Palpitations. Not all the time, but.” Mary’s health problems had sobered up the whole family. Muneeza’s tantrums had stopped, and even my father was making an effort. They had put up a Christmas _/ tree in the sitting-room and decorated it with all sorts of baubles. It was so odd to see a Christmas tree at our place that I realised things must be fairly serious. +— On Christmas Eve my mother suggested that Mary might like it if we all sang some carols. Amma had made song-sheets, six copies, by hand. When we did O come, all ye faithful 1 showed off by singing from memory in Latin. Everybody behaved perfectly. When Muneeza suggested that we should try Swinging on a Star or I Wanna Hold Your Hand instead of this boring stuff, she wasn’t really being serious. So this is family life, I thought. This is it. But we were only playacting. A few weeks earlier, at school, I’d come across an American boy, the star of the

school’s Rugby football team, crying in the Chapel cloisters. asked him what the matter was and he told me that President Kennedy had been assassinated. “I don't

believe you,” I said, but I could see that it was true. The football star sobbed and

sobbed. I took his hand. “When the President dies, the nation is orphaned,” he eventually said, brokenheartedly parroting a piece of cracker-barrel wisdom he’d probably heard on Voice of America. “I know how you feel,” I lied. “My father just died, too.”

and Mary’s heart trouble turned out to be a mystery; unpredictably, it came

months, but each time went. She was subjected to all sorts of tests during the next six

wrong the doctors ended up by shaking their heads: They couldn't find anything periods when with her. Physically, she was right as rain; except that there were these Misfits,”' the her heart kicked and bucked in her chest like the wild horses in The ones whose roping and tying made Marilyn Monroe so mad. starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and 21 The Misfits: A western film (1960) written by Arthur Miller and horses. wild Montgomery Clift about a roundup of

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Mecir went back to work in the spring, but his experience had knocked the ’ stuffing out of him. He was slower to smile, duller of eye, more inward. Mary, too, had turned in upon herself. They still met for tea, crumpets, and The Flintstones, but something was no longer quite right. At the beginning of the summer Mary made an announcement. “I know what is wrong with me,” she told my parents, out of the blue. “I need to go home.” “But, Aya,” my mother argued, “homesickness is not a real disease.” “God knows for what-all we came over to this country,” Mary said. “But I can no longer stay. No. Certainly not.” Her determination was absolute. So it was England that was breaking her heart, breaking it by not being India. London was killing her, by not being Bombay. And Mixed-Up? I wondered. Was the courter killing her, too, because he was no longer himself? Or was it that her heart, roped by two different loves, was being pulled both East and West, whinnying and rearing, like those movie horses being yanked this way by Clark Gable and that way by Montgomery Clift, and she knew that to live she would have to choose? “T must go,” said Certainly-Mary. “Yes, certainly. Bas. Enough.” That summer, the summer of ’64, I turned seventeen. Chandni went back to

India. Durré’s Polish friend Rozalia informed me over a sandwich in Oxford Street that she was getting engaged to a “real man,” so I could forget about seeing her again, because this Zbigniew was the jealous type. Roy Orbison sang It’s Over in my ears as I walked away to the Tube, but the truth was that nothing had really begun. Certainly-Mary left us in mid-July. My father bought her a one-way ticket to Bombay, and that last morning was heavy with the pain of ending. When we took her bags down to the car, Mecir the hall porter was nowhere to be seen. Mary did not knock on the door of his lounge, but walked straight out through the freshly polished oak-panelled lobby, whose mirrors and brasses were sparkling brightly; she climbed into the back seat of our Ford Zodiac and sat there stiffly with her carry-on grip on her lap, staring straight ahead. I had known and loved her all my life. Never pind yourmares courter, I wanted to shout at her, what about me a

r= As it happened, she was right about the homesickness. After her return to Bom| bay, she never had a day’s heart trouble again; and, as the letter from her niece Stella _ confirmed, at ninety-one she was still going strong. ‘Soon after she left, my father told us he had decided to “shift location” to Pakistan. As usual, there were no discussions, no explanations, just the simple fiat. He gave up the lease on the flat in Waverley House at the end of the summer holidays, and they all went off to Karachi, while I went back to school.

I became a British citizen that year. I was one of the lucky ones, I guess, because . in spite of that chess game I had the Dodo on my side. And the passport did, in many ways, set me free. It allowed me to come and go, to make choices that were not the ones my father would have wished. But I, too, have ropes around my neck, I have

them to this day, pulling me this way and that, East and West, the nooses tightening, , commanding, choose, choose. L

ed

Edwidge Danticat, b. 1969

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I buck, I snort, I whinny, I rear, I kick. Ropes, I do not choose between you. Lassoes, lariats, | choose neither of you, and both. Do you hear? I refuse to choose.

-— Avyear or so after we moved out I was in the area and dropped in at Waverley \ House to see how the old courter was doing. Maybe, I thought, we could have a game | of chess, and he could beat me to a pulp. The lobby was empty, so I knocked on the door of his little lounge. A stranger answered. \ “Where’s Mixed-Up?” I cried, taken by surprise. I apologised at once, embar\ rassed. “Mr. Mecir, I meant, the porter.” \ Pm the porter, sir” the man said. “I don’t know anything about any mix-up.”

Qx

EDWIDGE

DANTICAT

B. HAITI, 1969 Although she is still a young woman, Edwidge Danticat is probably the most important Haitian American author writing today. Her novels and short stories present not only the immigrant experience but also the

and vengeance what

troubled history of her homeland. nH

From Haiti to New York.

“[Edwidge Danticat is] doing for Haiti’s history of violence

i

ya!

f

Born in Haiti in 1969, Danticat was raised by

an aunt after her parents emigrated to New York without her. During her childhood she was deeply influenced by Haitian oral storytelling, an influence she acknowledged in the title to her collection of short stories

Krik? Krak! (1995), derived from the Haitian tradition of a storyteller call-

ing out “Krik?” and willing listeners gathering around and responding “Krak!” She especially remembers listening to her grandmother telling stories about her grandfather who had resisted the U.S. occupation of Haiti between the two world wars. Commenting on the importance of such stories, she told an interviewer for the British newspaper The Guardian, “These things are not written anywhere. Sitting with an older person tells you another side.” When she was twelve Danticat joined her parents in New York. As a child she had spoken Creole and learned French in school. She learned a time English only after moving to New York and recalls that there was express to able ,’ languages between ely “complet when, as a child, she was graduherself orally in Creole but unable to write in any language. After in degrees earned ating from Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, she from writing creative in and French literature from Barnard College Brown University.

her first Novels of the Haitian experience. Her master’s thesis became whose Sophie, by ed Narrat published novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994). novel the t’s, Dantica es resembl York personal history in Haiti and New

Toni Morrison did

forthe WSin tackling the horrors of slavery

and its aftermath.” — RosBert ANTONI, West Indian novelist

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EDWIDGE

DANTICAT

tells the lives of four generations of women of the Caro family. Viewed as a feminist novel, which Danticat dedicated to “the brave women of Haiti, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, daughters, and friends,

on this shore and other shores,” the novel disturbed some Haitian readers for betraying community “secrets” with its account of the Haitian practice of “testing” to confirm a daughter’s virginity. Danticat’s second novel, The Farming of Bones (1998), tells the story of a Haitian maid working in the Dominican Republic at the time of the Haitian massacre in 1937, when Dominican

troops murdered

thousands

dictator Raphael Trujillo’s

of Haitians who

were

working in the

Dominican sugar cane fields, farming bones. The book's title carries mul-

tiple meanings, referring both to the gathering of cane and to the massacre, and so invokes the events of 1937 as well as the economic history

that created them. Danticat’s account of the events is based in part on oral stories that she heard from older Haitians who had survived the massacre. Her most recent novel, The Dew Breaker (2004) also deals with

Haiti’s violent history in its story of a Haitian American who learns that her father was a torturer for the Tonton Macoutes, the secret police under dictators Papa Doc Duvalier and his son Baby Doc. Danticat has maintained ties with her homeland and has made films about Haiti and its history. She lives in the large Haitian community in Miami and teaches creative writing at New York University and the University of Miami. “Children of the Sea.” Using alternating diary entries by two Haitian young people, a radical activist who has escaped Haiti on a boat headed for Florida and his girlfriend left behind, Danticat dramatizes in “Children of the Sea” the horrors that prompt Haitians to risk their lives to reach the United States. Set in 1991-92 after the military coup that over-

threw the first Aristide government, the story was nearly contemporary with its periodical publication in 1993 under the title “From the Ocean Floor.” It was included in Danticat’s 1995 collection of short stories Krik? Krak!. When the book was nominated for the National Book Award, Dan-

ticat told an NPR interviewer, “I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, for the most part, ... poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles.” The story assumes at least some familiarity with Haitian politics and history and an awareness of the different treatment that Haitian boat people have received in the United States from that accorded to Cubans. These political issues, however, remain in the background. In the foreground, in a style that British novelist Fay Weldon says “delicately tiptoes through bougainvillea and butterflies into minefields of rape, mayhem, insanity, suicide, terror,’ Danticat focuses on the stories of the two young people, their immediate personal relationships, and their hopes and fears. @ FURTHER

RESEARCH

Newson, Adele S., and Linda Strong-Leek, eds. Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars. 1998.

Children of the Sea

Cw

Children of the Sea

They say behind the mountains are more mountains. Now I know it’s true. I also know there are timeless waters, endless seas, and lots of people in this world whose names don’t matter to anyone but themselves. I look up at the sky and I see you there. I see you crying like a crushed snail, the way you cried when I helped you pull out your first loose tooth. Yes, I did love you then. Somehow when I looked at you, I thought of fiery red ants. I wanted you to dig your fingernails into my skin and drain out all my blood. I don’t know how long we'll be at sea. There are thirty-six other deserting souls on this little boat with me. White sheets with bright red spots float as our sail. When I got on board I thought I could still smell the semen and the innocence lost to those sheets. I look up there and I think of you and all those times you resisted. Sometimes I felt like you wanted to, but I knew you wanted me to respect you. You thought I was testing your will, but all I wanted was to be near you. Maybe it’s like you've always said. I imagine too much. I am afraid I am going to start having nightmares once we get deep at sea. I really hate having the sun in my face all day long. If you see me again, I'll be so dark. Your father will probably marry you off now, since I am gone. Whatever you do, please don’t marry a soldier. They're almost not human. haiti est comme tu I’as laissé. yes, just the way you left it. bullets day and night. same hole. same everything. i’m tired of the whole mess. i get so cross and irritable. 1 pass the time by chasing roaches around the house. i pound my heel on their heads. they make me so mad. everything makes me mad. i am cramped inside all day. they’ve closed the schools since the army took over. no one is mentioning the old president’s' name. papa burnt all his campaign posters and old buttons. manman_ buried her buttons in a hole behind the house. she thinks he might come back. she says she will unearth them when he does. no one comes out of their house. not a single person. papa wants me to throw out those tapes of your radio shows. 1 when destroyed some music tapes, but i still have your voice. i thank god you got out heard has one no disappeared. have members federation youth you did. all the other a from them. i think they might all be in prison. maybe they’re all dead. papa worries him little about you. he doesn’t hate you as much as you think. the other day i heard know. i think asking manman, do you think the boy is dead? manman said she didn’t because 1 he regrets being so mean to you. i don’t sketch my butterflies anymore can bring news, don’t even like seeing the sun. besides, manman says.that butterflies we have our us of deaths. the bright ones bring happy news and the black ones warn

butthen again things were whole lives ahead ofus.you used to saythat, remember? sO very different then.

ically elected president of Haiti in 1990, held ‘the old president: Jean-Bertrand Aristide (b. 1953), democrat 1996. to office for seven months in 1991 and again from 1994

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EDWIDGE

1782

DANTICAT

There is a pregnant girl on board. She looks like she might be our age. Nineteen or twenty. Her face is covered with scars that look like razor marks. She is short and speaks in a singsong that reminds me of the villagers in the north. Most of the other people on the boat are much older than I am. I have heard that a lot of these boats have young children on board. | am glad this one does not. I think it would break my heart watching some little boy or girl every single day on this sea, looking into their empty faces to remind me of the hopelessness of the future in our country. It’s hard enough with the adults. It’s hard enough with me. I used to read a lot about America before I had to study so much for the university exams. I am trying to think, to see if I read anything more about Miami. It 1s sunny. It doesn’t snow there like it does in other parts of America. J can’t tell exactly how far we are from there. We might be barely out of our own shores. There are no borderlines on the sea. The whole thing looks like one. I cannot even tell if we are about to drop off the face of the earth. Maybe the world is flat and we are going to find out, like the navigators of old. As you know, I am not very religious. Still I pray

every night that wewon't hit a storm. When | do manage tosleep, I dream that we

are caughtin one hurricane after another. I dream that the winds come of the sky and claim us for the sea. We go under and no one hears from us again. I am more comfortable now with the idea of dying. Not that I have completely accepted it, but I know that it might happen. Don’t be mistaken. I really do not want to be a martyr. Iknow 1 am no good to anybody dead, but if that is what’s coming, I \ _ know I cannot just scream at it and tell it to go away. I hope another group of young people can do the radio show. For a long time i

that radio show was my whole life. It was nice to have radio like that for a while,

where we could talk about what we wanted from government, what we wanted for the future of our country. There are a lot of Protestants on this boat. A lot of them see themselves as Job or

the Children of Israel. I think some of them are hoping something will plunge down from the sky and part the sea for us. They say the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. I have never been given very much. What was there to take away? if only I could kill. if iknew some good wanga magic,’ i would wipe them off the face of the earth. a group of students got shot in front of fort dimanche prison today. they were de

g for

the bodi

you all. the radio six. you have a name. See

eas

you are

dead

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Tike the

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othe!

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ens

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you

is what they are calling

have a reputation. a lo 3

VY want the bodies turned

sae

e thin iments

over to the

families:

this

afternoon, the army finally did give some bodies back. they told the families to go

*wanga magic: Wanga, or magic charms in the vodou religion of Haiti, are fetishes that concentrate spiritual power in order to protect oneself from or to attack one’s enemies, but not to the extent of death. This religion is a syncretization, or intermixing, of African Benin and Christian faiths whose intricate and complex set of practices do not much resemble those of Western religions. At its foundation is a belief in spirits, or wa, that medi-

ate between the human and the natural and supernatural worlds. Together, the /wa form a pantheon much like a family or ensemble, each Iwa having a particular realm over which it rules. They are not gods, but mediators between a monotheistic god and humans; each /wa has been associated with a Catholic saint.

Children of the Sea

collect them at the rooms for indigents at the morgue. our neighbor madan roger came home with her son’s head and not much else. honest to god, it was just his

head.at the morgue, they say a car ran over hinr-and-took the head off his body.

when madan roger went to the morgue, they gave her the head. by the time we saw her, she had been carrying the head all over port-au-prince.’ just to show what’s been done to her son. the macoutes* by the house were laughing at her. they asked her if that was her dinner. it took ten people to hold her back from jumping on them. they would have killed her, the dogs. i will never go outside again. not even in the yard to breathe the air. they are always watching you, like vultures. at night i can’t sleep. i count the bullets in the dark. i keep wondering if it is true. did you really get out? i wish there was some way i could be sure that you really went away. yes, i will. i will keep writing like we promised to do. i hate it, but i will keep writing. you keep writing too, okay? and when we see each other again, it will seem like we lost no time.

Today was our first real day at sea. Everyone was vomiting with each small rocking of the boat. The faces around me are showing their first charcoal layer of sunburn. “Now we will never be mistaken for Cubans,” one man said. Even though some of the Cubans are black too. The man said he was once on a boat with a group of Cubans. His boat had stopped to pick up the Cubans on an island off the

starting to look. Some of the women sing and tell stories to each other to appease the vomiting. Still, |watch the sea. At night, the sky and the sea are one. The stars look so huge and so close. They make for very bright reflections in the sea. At times I feel like I can just reach out and pull a star down from the sky as though it is a breadfruit or a calabash or something that could be of use to us on this journey. I When we sing, Beloved Haiti, there is no place like you. I had to leave you before stop to want just I could understand you, some of the women start crying. At times, I am getting in the middle of the song and cry myself. To hide my tears, | pretend like singing. the in other attack of nausea, from the sea smell. I no longer join city. 3 port-au-prince: Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti and its largest ary troops who pursued and executed paramilit brutal ly infamous the macoutes, tonton The : 4the macoutes Duvalier was elected president in Haiti. of president the 1), the opponents of “Papa Doc” Duvalier (1907-197 His rule of Haiti was a cruel dictatorship. The tonton 1957, and in 1964 he declared himself president for life.

macoutes are still a potent military force in the country. their home for the United States in the same manner S« | mistaken for Cubans”: Many Cuban people leave story. this in d describe people as the Haitian boat

1783

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EDWIDGE

DANTICAT

You probably do not know much about this, because you have always been so closely watched by your father in that well-guarded house with your genteel mother. No, I am not making fun of you for this. If anything, I am jealous. If Iwas a girl, maybe I would have been at home and not out politicking and getting myself into something like this. Once you have been at sea for a couple of days, it smells like every fish you have ever eaten, every crab you have ever caught, every jellyfish that has ever bitten your leg. I am so tired of the smell. I am also tired of the way the people on this boat are starting to stink. The pregnant girl, Célianne, I don’t know

how she takes it. She stares into space all the time and rubs her stomach. I have never seen her eat. Sometimes the other women offer her a piece of bread and she takes it, but she has no food of her own. I cannot help feeling like she will

have this child as soon as she gets hungry enough. She woke up screaming the other night. I thought she had a stomach ache. Some water started coming into the boat in the spot where she was sleeping. There is a crack at the bottom of the boat that looks as though, if it gets any bigger, it will split the boat in two. The captain cleared us aside and used some tar to clog up the hole. Everyone started asking him if it was okay, if they were going to be okay. He said he hoped the Coast Guard would find us soon. ~~ You can’t really go to sleep after that. So we all stared at the tar by the moonlight. We did this until dawn. I cannot help but wonder how long this tar will hold out. papa found your tapes. he started yelling at me, asking if I was crazy keeping them. he is just waiting for the gasoline ban to be lifted so we can get out of the city. he is always pestering me these days because he cannot go out driving his van. all the american factories are closed.° he kept yelling at me about the tapes. he called me selfish, and he asked if i hadn’t seen or heard what was happening to man-crazy whores like me. i shouted that i wasn’t a whore. he had no business calling me that. he pushed me against the wall for disrespecting him. he spat in my face. i wish thosé macoutes would kill him. i wish he would catch a bullet so we could see how scared he really is. he said to me, i didn’t send your stupid trouble maker away. i started yelling at him. yes, you did. yes, you did. yes, you did, you pig peasant. i don’t know why i said that. he slapped me and kept slapping me really hard until manman came and grabbed me away from him. 1 wish one of those bullets would hit me. The tar is holding up so far. Two days and no more leaks. Yes, I am ly a African. I am even darker than your father. I wanted to buy a straw hat from one of the ladies, but she would not sell it to me for the last two gourdes’ I have left in change. Do you think your money is worth anything to me here? she asked me. Sometimes, I forget where I am. If I keep daydreaming like I have been doing, I will walk off the boat to go for a stroll.

*all . . . closed: Many North American companies, attracted to Haiti because of the low labor costs, pulled out during the political uncertainties of the 1990s. 7 gourdes: Official currency of Haiti.

Children of the Sea

._

1785

The other night I dreamt that I died and went to heaven. This heaven was nothing like I expected. It was at the bottom of the sea. There were starfishes and mermaids all around me. The mermaids were dancing and singing in Latin like the priests do at the cathedral during Mass. You were there with me too, at the bottom of the sea. You were with your family, off to the side. Your father was acting like he was better than everyone else and he was standing in front of a sea cave blocking you from my view. I tried to talk to you, but every time I opened my mouth, water bubbles came out. No sounds.