Part 5 (2/2)
”You are just the man we want,” cried Frank. ”We want to publish one of your poems in the paper this week.”
”I have burnt my poems,” he answered, with something more of sacerdotal tone and gesture than usual.
All the scribblers looked up. ”You don't mean to say seriously that you have burnt your poems?”
”Yes; but I do not care to discuss my reasons. You do not feel as I do.”
”You mean to say that you have burnt _The Last Struggle_--the poem you told us about the other night?”
”Yes, I felt I could not reconcile its teaching, or I should say the tendency of its teaching, to my religion. I do not regret--besides, I had to do it; I felt I was going off my head. I should have gone mad.
I have been through agonies. I could not think. Thought and pain and trouble were as one in my brain. I heard voices.... I had to do it.
And now a great calm has come. I feel much better.”
”You are a curious chap.”
Then at the end of a long silence John said, as if he wished to change the conversation--
”Even though I did burn my pessimistic poem, the world will not go without one. You are writing a poem on Schopenhauer's philosophy.
It is hard to a.s.sociate pessimism with you.”
”Only because you take the ordinary view of the tendency of pessimistic teaching,” said Mike. ”If you want a young and laughing world, preach Schopenhauer at every street corner; if you want a sober utilitarian world, preach Comte.”
”Doesn't much matter what the world is as long as it is not sober,”
chuckled Platt, the paragraph-writing youth at the bottom of the table.
”Hold your tongue!” cried Drake, and he lighted another cigarette preparatory to fixing his whole attention on the paradox that Mike was about to enounce.
”The optimist believes in the regeneration of the race, in its ultimate perfectibility, the synthesis of humanity, the providential idea, and the path of the future; he therefore puts on a shovel hat, cries out against l.u.s.t, and depreciates prost.i.tution.”
”Oh, the brute!” chuckled the wizen youth, ”without prost.i.tutes and public-houses! what a world to live in!”
”The optimist counsels manual labour for all. The pessimist believes that forgetfulness and nothingness is the whole of man. He says, 'I defy the wisest of you to tell me why I am here, and being here, what good is gained by my a.s.sisting to bring others here.' The pessimist is therefore the gay Johnny, and the optimist is the melancholy Johnny. The former drinks champagne and takes his 'tart' out to dinner, the latter says that life is not intended to be happy in--that there is plenty of time to rest when you are dead.”
John laughed loudly; but a moment after, rea.s.suming his look of admonition, he asked Mike to tell him about his poem.
”The subject is astonis.h.i.+ngly beautiful,” said Mike; ”I only speak of the subject; no one, not even Victor Hugo or Sh.e.l.ley, ever conceived a finer theme. But they had execution, I have only the idea. I suppose the world to have ended; but ended, how? Man has at last recognized that life is, in equal parts, misery and abomination, and has resolved that it shall cease. The tide of pa.s.sion has again risen, and lashed by repression to tenfold fury, the sh.o.r.es of life have again been strewn with new victims; but knowledge--calm, will-less knowledge--has gradually invaded all hearts; and the restless, s.h.i.+fting sea (which is pa.s.sion) shrinks to its furthest limits.
”There have been Messiahs, there have been persecutions, but the Word has been preached unintermittently. Crowds have gathered to listen to the wild-eyed prophets. You see them on the desert promontories, preaching that human life must cease; they call it a disgraceful episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets--you see them hunted and tortured as were their ancestors, the Christians of the reign of Diocletian. You see them entering cottage doors and making converts in humble homes. The world, grown tired of vain misery, accepts oblivion.
”The rage and the seething of the sea is the image I select to represent the struggle for life. The dawn is my image for the diffusion and triumph of sufficient reason. In a couple of hundred lines I have set my scene, and I begin. It is in the plains of Normandy; of countless millions only two friends remain. One of them is dying. As the stars recede he stretches his hand to his companion, breathes once more, looking him in the face, joyous in the attainment of final rest. A hole is sc.r.a.ped, and the last burial is achieved.
Then the man, a young beautiful man with the pallor of long vigils and spiritual combat upon his face, arises.
”The scene echoes strangely the asceticism that produced it.
Rose-garden and vineyard are gone; there are no fields, nor hedgerows, nor gables seen picturesquely on a sky, human with smoke mildly ascending. A broken wall that a great elm tears and rends, startles the silence; apple-orchards spread no flowery snow, and the familiar thrushes have deserted the moss-grown trees, in other times their trees; and the virgin forest ceases only to make bleak place for marish plains with lonely pools and stagnating streams, where perchance a heron rises on blue and heavy wings.
”All the beautiful colours the world had worn when she was man's mistress are gone, and now, as if mourning for her lover and lord, she is clad only in sombre raiment. Since her lord departed she bears but scanty fruit, and since her lover left her, she that was glad has grown morose; her joy seems to have died with his; and the feeling of gloom is heightened, when at the sound of the man's footsteps a pack of wild dogs escape from a ruin, where they have been sleeping, and wake the forest with lugubrious yelps and barks. About the dismantled porches no single rose--the survival of roses planted by some fair woman's hand--remains to tell that man was once there--worked there for his daily bread, seeking a goodness and truth in life which was not his lot to attain.
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