FOURTH BOOK
1
A man, a stone, or a tree is going to begin this fourth song. When the foot slips on a frog which it has crushed, one has a feeling of disgust; but when one merely brushes against the human body with one's hand, the skin of one's fingers cracks like fragments of a block of mica smashed by hammer-blows; and just as, on ship's deck, the heart of a shark, though it has been dead for an hour, goes on beating with dogged vitality, so too our entrails are stirred to the depth long after that touch. Such is the horror which man inspires in his fellow-beings! Perhaps in suggesting this I am mistaken; but it may be that I am right. I know, I can conceive of a malady more terrible than the puffiness of the eyes which comes from long hours of meditation on the strange character of man: but I am still seeking it...and I have not been able to find it! I do not think I am less intelligent than the next man, but who would dare to declare that I have succeeded in my investigation? What a lie his lips would be telling! The ancient temple of Denderah is one and a half hours' journey from the left bank of the Nile. Today countless swarms of wasps have taken possession of its gutters and cornices. They fly around the columns like the thick waves of a head of black hair. Sole inhabitants of the cold porch, they guard the entrance to the vestibule as if it were a hereditary right. I compare the buzzing of their metallic wings to the incessant crashing of ice-floes flung against one another when the ice breaks up in polar seas. But when I consider the conduct of him who providence gave the throne of this earth three pinions of my sorrow make a far louder hum! When, after eighty years' absence, a comet reappears in some part of the heavens, it displays its brilliant nebulous trail for men and for crickets to behold. No doubt it is unaware of this long journey; the same is not true of me: sitting up in bed while the jagged shapes of a gloomy and arid horizon loom up in force from the depths of my soul, I give myself up to dreams of compassion, and I blush for man! The sailor, cut by the blasts of the north wind, hurries back to his hammock when he has finished his night watch: why am I not granted this consolation? The thought that I have willfully fallen as low as my fellow-beings, that I have less right than the next man to bewail our fate, which remains shackled to the hardened crust of a planet, or the essence of our perverse souls, pierces me like a massive nail. We have seen whole families wiped out by fire-damp explosions; but the pain they felt must have been short, since death is almost instantaneous, amid the ruins and the noxious gasses...I...I still exist, like basalt. In the middle as at the beginning of their lives angels still look the same: yet it is ages since I looked myself. Man and I, confined within the bounds of our understanding, as often a lake is amid a circle of coral islands, instead of joining forces to defend ourselves against chance and misfortune, avoid each other, and, trembling with hate, take opposite roads, as if we had stabbed one another with the point of a dagger. You would think that each one realizes the scorn the other feels for him; motivated by a feeling of relative dignity, we are anxious not to mislead our adversary; each one keeps to himself and is aware that peace, if it were proclaimed, would be impossible to keep. Well, then, let it be! Let my war against man go on for eternity, since each recognizes his own degradation in the other...since we are both mortal enemies. Whether I am destined to win a disastrous victory or to succumb, the struggle will be good: I alone against mankind. I shall not use weapons made of wood or iron; I shall spurn all the minerals of the earth; the powerful and seraphic resonance of the harp will be a formidable talisman in my hands. In several ambushes man, the sublime monkey, has already pierced my breast with his porphyry lance: a soldier does not show his wounds, however glorious they may be. This terrible war will bring sorrow to both sides: two friends stubbornly seeking to destroy one another, what a scene!
2
Two columns, which it was not difficult, far less impossible, to take for baobabs, could be seen in the valley, bigger than two pin. In fact, they were two huge towers. Now though, at first sight, two baobobs do not look like two pins, or even like two towers, nevertheless, by adroit use of the strings of prudence, one may affirm, without fear of error (for if this affirmation were accompanied by the least scrap of such fear, it would be no affirmation; although a single name expresses these two phenomena of the soul whose characteristics are sufficiently well-defined as not to be easily confused), one may affirm that a baobob is not so very different from a column that comparison between these two architectural forms should be forbidden...or geometrical forms...or both...or neither...or rather high and massive forms. I have just discovered, I do not deny it, the epithets appropriate to the nouns column and baobob: and I want you to know that it is not without a feeling of joy mingled with pride that I make this observation to those who, after raising their eyelids, have made the very praiseworthy resolution to look through these pages, while the candle burns if it is night, while the sun casts its light, if it is day. And yet, even if a higher power were to command us, in the clearest possible terms, to cast this judicious comparison, which everyone has been able to relish with impunity, into the abyss of chaos, even then, and especially then, let us not lose sight of this main axiom, that the habits acquired over years through books and contact with one's fellows, and the innate character of each individual, which develops in rapid efflorescence all these would impose on the human mind the irreparable stigma of relapse into the criminal use (criminal, that is, if we momentarily and spontaneously take the point of view of the superior power) of a rhetorical figure which several people despise, but many adore. If the reader finds this sentence too long, let him accept my apologies; but let him expect no groveling on my part. I may acknowledge my mistakes; but I will not make them more serious by my cowardice. My reasoning will sometimes jingle the bells of madness and the serious appearance of what is, after all, merely grotesque (although, according to some philosophers, it is quite difficult to tell the difference between the clown and the melancholic man, life itself being but a comic tragedy or a tragic comedy); however, each of us is free to kill flies and even rhinoceri from time to time as a relaxation from too demanding labours. The speediest way of killing flies, though it may not be the best, is this: you crush them between the first two fingers of your hand. The majority of writers who have gone into this subject have calculated, apparently convincingly, that it is preferable in several cases to cut off their heads. If anyone should reproach me for speaking of such an absolutely trivial subject as pins, I should like him to note, without bias, that the greatest effects are often produced by the smallest causes. And without straying more from the setting of this piece of paper, can one not see that the laborious piece of literature which I have been composing since the beginning of this strophe would perhaps be relished less if were based on a problem in chemistry or internal pathology. Besides, in nature there all kinds of tastes; and when at the beginning I compared the columns to the pins with such exactitude (certainly I did not think I would one day be reproached for it), I based this on the laws of optics which have proved that the further away from an object one stands, the smaller the image of its reflection on the retina.
Thus it is that what our mind's tendency to farce takes for a wretched attempt at wit is simply, in the author's own mind, an important truth, solemnly proclaimed! Oh that mad philosopher who burst into laughter when he saw an ass eating a fig! I am not making this up; ancient books have recounted in the fullest detail this willful and shameful derogation of human nobility. I cannot laugh. I have never been able to laugh, though I have tried to do so several times. It is very difficult to learn to laugh. Or rather I think that a feeling of loathing for this monstrosity is an essential feature of my character. Now I have witnessed something even more outrageous: I have seen a fig eating as ass! And yet I did not laugh; honestly, not a muscle on my face moved. The need to cry took such violent possession of me that my eyes shed a tear. 'Nature! Nature!' I cried, sobbing. 'The hawk tears the sparrow to pieces, the fig eats the ass, and the tapeworm devours man.' Before deciding to go on, I wonder if I have
spoken of the way to kill flies. I have, have I not? And yet it is equally true that I had not previously spoken of the destruction of rhinoceri. If certain of my friends were to claim the contrary, I would not listen to them and I would bear in mind that praise and flattery are two great stumbling-blocks. However, in order to appease my conscience as far as possible, I cannot help observing that this dissertation on the rhinoceros would carry me beyond the limits of patience and composure and would probably (let us even be so bold as to say certainly) daunt the present generation. To think of not speaking of the rhinoceros after the fly! At least as a passable excuse I ought to have mentioned (but I did not!) this unpremeditated omission, which will not surprise those who have studied in depth the real and inexplicable contradictions which abide in the lobes of the human brain. Nothing is unworthy of a great and simple understanding; the least phenomenon in nature, if there is anything mysterious about it, can be an inexhaustible subject of reflection for the wise man. If someone sees an ass eating a fig or a fig eating an ass (these two circumstances do not often occur, unless it be in poetry), you may be sure that after reflecting for two or three minutes on what course to adopt, he will abandon the path of virtue and start laughing like a cock! Yet it is not exactly proven that cocks deliberately open their mouths to imitate men and to grin anxiously. I am applying to birds the same word grimace that we use for men. The cock does not change his nature, not because he is unable to do so, but because he is too proud. Teach them to read and they refuse. No parrot would go into such raptures at its own ignorant and inexcusable weakness. Oh execrable debasement! how like a goat one looks when one laughs! The smooth calmness of the brow has disappeared and given way to enormous fish-eyes which (isn't it deplorable?)...which...start to shine like lighthouses! It will often happen that I solemnly make the most clownish statements...I do not consider this a sufficiently decisive motive for me to open my mouth wide! I cannot help laughing, you will reply; I accept this absurd explanation, but then let it be a melancholy laugh. Laugh, but cry at the same time. If even that is impossible, urinate; but I warn you that some kind of liquid is necessary here, to counteract the dryness that laughter, with its creased features, bears in its womb. For my part, I shall not be put out by the ludicrous chuckles and strange bellowings of those who always find fault with a character which is not like their own, because it is one of the countless intellectual variation which, without departing from his primordial model, God created for the guidance of this bony frame of ours. Until our times, poetry has taken the wrong path; rising up to the sky or crawling along the ground, it has failed to recognize the principles of its existence and has with good reason been scorned by honest people. It has not been modest...and modesty is the noblest quality which can exist in an imperfect being! I wish to display my good qualities; but I am not hypocritical enough to hide my vices. Laughter, evil, pride and madness will appear in turn along with sensibility and the love of justice, and will be an example, to the utter astonishment of all men: everyone will recognize himself in my work, not as he ought to be, but as he is. And perhaps this simple ideal which my imagination has conceived will yet surpass all that has been held most magnificent and most sacred in poetry up to now. For if I let my vices seep through in these pages, people will believe even more in the virtues which shine through in them; and I shall put such high and glorious haloes around those virtues that the greatest geniuses of the future will be sincerely grateful to me. Thus hypocrisy will be categorically hunted out of my abode. And there will be impressive evidence of power in my songs, in the way I disdain received ideas. He sings for himself alone, not for his fellow-beings. He does not put the measure of his inspiration in the scales of human judgement. Free as the tempest, one day he ran aground on the indomitable strand of his terrible will. He fears nothing, unless it be himself. In his supernatural combats he will attack man and the Creator to his advantage, as when the swordfish thrusts its sword deep into the whale's belly: accursed be him by his children and by my fleshless hand who persists in not understanding the implacable kangaroos of laughter and the bold lice of caricature!...The two huge towers could be seen in the valley; I said so at the beginning. Multiplying them by two, the result was four...but I could not see very clearly the necessity of this arithmetical operation. I continued on my way, my face flushed with fever, and cried out incessantly: 'No...no...I cannot see very clearly the necessity of this arithmetical operation!' I had heard the clanking of chains and groans of pain. May no one find it possible, when passing through that place, to multiply the towers by two, that the result be four! There are some who suspect that I love mankind as much as if I were its own mother and had borne it nine months in my perfumed womb; that is why I never go back to the valley where two units of the multiplicand stand!