My Friend, the Incurable
Atdusk I pass an ugly red building with shrieking fat black letters on its façade—Home for Incurables. Shrill grass, narcotic carnations, hazy figures in rocking chairs and on the balconies, melting in the liquid gold of autumn twilight—a harmony of discord that screams for the spiritual brush of Kandinsky. There are no signs of pain or grief on the faces of the doomed: a profound calmness they bear, a resolute quiescence, reminding us of Dante after he had seen hell or of Andreyev’s resurrected Lazarus. “To be sure, they are quite happy,” explained the obliging Doctor. “These men and women have come to be free of struggles, of doubts, and of the anguish of hopes. The knowledge of their fate, the ultimate, irrevocable truth, is a relieving balm for the tired spirits—nay, even for the hopeless bodies, for as soon as they cease fighting their disease they learn to adapt themselves to that disease, to consider it an inseparable part of their existence. I can show you a number of patients who are actually in love with their affliction, who would resent the idea of being turned normal. Look at the hilarious face of that fellow yonder at the fountain; he is intoxicated with sunset, and appears to be the happiest of mortals, despite his terrible disease. A queer case, an un-American case.”
The doctor uttered a fearful Latin term and told me the history of that patient. A European, he has been for many years afflicted with something like “sentimentalomania,” a peculiarly Continental ailment. Skilful physicians had tried in vain to cure him; change of climate and environment had been of no avail: even in Siberian tundras and in foggy London his disposition remained unaltered. In despair he went to Berlin, where, he was advised, the gravest case of sentimentality would be annihilated; the reaction proved almost fatal, for the Spree and theSieges Alleemade such a nauseating impression upon the poor fellow that his illness was complicated by a severe outbreak of Germanophobia. As a last resort, the famous specialist, Herr Dr. Von Bierueberalles, bade him taste the influence of the sanest atmosphere on earth, that of the States. When even the harshest and most practical American treatment had failed to knock out the unfortunate’s folly, he was pronounced hopeless and offered a place among the incurables, which offer he willingly accepted, and acquiesced. He has since become accustomed to his disease and bears it rather with defiant joy.
At times, when I seek relief from practical values and sane standards, I come to have a chat with my friend, the Incurable. Henceforth he will have the floor.
With whom do I side in the War? Why, of course, with Germany! Perhaps my attitude shows that I have not been completely cured from thePrussophobia that I had contracted in Berlin; as it is, I sincerely wish to see the German boot victorious on the whole continent and over the mouldy Britons, a rude, dreamless, wingless Napoleon brooding over old napping Europe. Picture the ruined cathedrals of Belgium and France “restored” into comfortable barracks for the braves of the Fatherland; picture the boulevards of Paris and Brusselles, the quays of the Neva and the Thames, ornated with the statues of the most Christian Wilhelm and of his illustrious ancestors down to the Great Elector of Brandenburg; picture the excellentSchutzmanreigning supreme, physically and spiritually, from Vladivostock to Glasgow,—think what an abyss of hatred, of stirring electrifying hatred will arise among the rotting nations, and out of hatred self consciousness, endeavors, cravings, to be crystallized in torrents of new art creations! As for Germany, I have no fear for the duration of her hegemony; she will undoubtedly choke from indigestion. But oh, how I dread the reverse outcome! The victory of the Allies will push Progress a century backward; it will strengthen the tottering absolutism in Russia; it will swell the piggish arrogance of the French bourgeois; it will augment the insular hypocricity of the English Philistine; it will still more, if it is possible, vulgarize international diplomacy and greed, arousing the appetites of the so-called Democracies.
Democracy—who was it that recently stated with charming aplomb that “Individualism and democracy are synonymous terms?” Yes, I recall: it came from the pen of the author ofIncense and SplendorandTo the Innermost. I confess this statement, especially when considering its authorship, came to me as a revelation. To me the word “democracy,” as many another beautiful word, has lost its original lofty meaning and has come to rhyme with mediocrity, with the strangling of the Few of the Mountain by the Many of the Valley. Could you name many great things that the most democratized countries, like America and Switzerland, have produced outside of Schweitzer-cheese and Victrolas? Has there ever been a great individualist who appeared as a child of his age, as an outgrowth and a reflection of a democracy? I do not know of such instances. Of course, I grant that the writer of that statement put into the word “Democracy” a higher, a more idealistic meaning. Words, like music, like practically every medium of art, express the author’s personality, and, provided he is an artist, he binds us to share his interpretation. Take, for example, that popular song, “Oh, You Beautiful Doll”; apparently there is nothing tragic in it, yet my emotions were stirred when I heard its French interpretation by Olga Petrova (it was before the kind American entrepreneurs had forced her to perform stunts in Panthea). She had managed to put so much sorrow and tenderness into “O Ma Grande Belle Poupée!” that one forgot the triteness of the words and felt gripping sadness. Or take a less vulgar illustration—Gertrude Stein’sTender Buttons.[1]It is an exquisite little thing in cream covers, witha green moon in the center, implying the yolk of an egg with which “something is the matter,” and it gave me rare pleasure to witness the first attempt to revolutionize the most obsolete and inflexible medium of Art—words. The author has endeavored to use language in the same way as Kandinsky uses his colors: to discard conventional structure, to eliminate understandable figures and forms, and to create a “spiritual harmony,” leaving to the layman the task of discovering the “innerer Klang.” Both iconoclasts have admirably succeeded; both the “Improvisations” and the little “essays” on roast-beef and seltzer-bottles have given me the great joy of cocreating, allowing me to interpret them in my own autonomous way. Says the Painter:[2]
The apt use of a word, repetition of this word, twice, three times or even more frequently, will not only tend to intensify the inner harmony but also to bring to light unsuspected spiritual properties of the word itself. Further than that, frequent repetition of a word deprives the word of its original external meaning.
The apt use of a word, repetition of this word, twice, three times or even more frequently, will not only tend to intensify the inner harmony but also to bring to light unsuspected spiritual properties of the word itself. Further than that, frequent repetition of a word deprives the word of its original external meaning.
Gertrude Stein has beautifully followed this recipe. Words, plain everyday words, have lost their “external meaning” under her skilful manipulation, and in their grotesque arrangement, frequent repetition, and intentional incoherence they have come to serve as quaint ephemeral sounds of a suggestive symphony, or, if you please, cacophony. TheTender Buttonsarouse in the sympathetic reader a limitless amount of moods, from scherzo to maestoso. I shall recall for you a few lines of one peculiar motive:
(FromA Substance in a Cushion.)What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it.(FromRed Roses.)A cool red rose and a pink cut pink, a collapse and a sole hole, a little less hot.Aider, why aider why whow, whow stop touch, aider whow, aider stop the muncher, muncher munchers.(FromBreakfast.)What is a loving tongue and pepper and more fish than there is when tears many tears are necessary.Why is there more craving than there is in a mountain.... Why is there so much useless suffering. Why is there.
(FromA Substance in a Cushion.)
What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it.
(FromRed Roses.)
A cool red rose and a pink cut pink, a collapse and a sole hole, a little less hot.
Aider, why aider why whow, whow stop touch, aider whow, aider stop the muncher, muncher munchers.
(FromBreakfast.)
What is a loving tongue and pepper and more fish than there is when tears many tears are necessary.
Why is there more craving than there is in a mountain.... Why is there so much useless suffering. Why is there.
Do you not feel the deep melancholy underlying these incongruities? I could quote places that would bring you into a totally different mood, most hilarious at times. These “exaggerated cranberries,” to paraphrase an expression of one of my incurable colleagues, should be chanted to the music of another great iconoclast, Schoenberg. But I observe an indulgent sneer on your face. Of course, I am an Incurable—Adieu!
Ibn Gabirol.
[1]Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein [Claire Marie, New York].
[2]The Art of Spiritual Harmony, by W. Kandinsky [Houghton Mifflin, Boston].