I. Not to Become a Slave

N

OT to become a slave, the first thing to determine is what is essential; and what may safe

ly be neglected.

So, in a gush of incautious honesty, uncertain whether ecstatic or despairing, I depose my testimony.

*

Panem et circenses: delicatessens and movies-these are all the populace insist upon, according to one theory.

And another antique philosopher said that the three elements that confuse and trouble human life are: the doings of kings, the passion of love, the nature of the gods.

And I concur: for the three problems of the twentieth century-and

of any century-are War, Sex, and God.

(There is not a line in this inward manifest that could not be excellently expanded.)

In every book ever published a thoughtful reader will somewhere write (?) and (!) on the margin.

But notwithstanding, let us read and think; for to-morrow we die.

Chasten the spirit, O Demiurge, for out of trouble and perplexity and happy anguish comes poetry that eases the heart.

And laughter is valiant; laughter purges and triumphs: but even laughter is not the whole. Laughter may whiles be cowardice, and mockery but sloth.

Blessed is he who has never been tempted; for he knows not the frailty of his rectitude.

And blessed is the satirist; and

blessed the ironist; blessed the witty scoffer, and blessed the sentimentalist; for each, having seen one spoke of the wheel, thinks to have seen all, and is content.

A young coloured buck and his doe dolled up on Sunday afternoon in the Easter rutting season, parading the pavement of Amsterdam Avenue, is nearly the most divinely comic sight in life.

Yet I do not laugh; for I know one sight more comic: myself.

As a mother cares for her children, and never sleeps so deeply but she can hear them cry; as she fills a drawer with little shirts and lavendered dresses for the baby who is coming (dresses so much longer than the infant itself), even so I lay away clean and softly folded words for that which is to be born. For I, too, am

expectant; in the beautiful German phrase I am guter Hoffnung: I wait the arrival of Truth.

I have a tenderness for life and a loving-kindness for Truth; not even a puny one shall be born in my mind but I will nourish it and do it honour.

But Truth is always twins; for every truth is accompanied by its facsimile error-which is the application of that truth by literal-minded people.

Yet the only thing I fear is to die barren: to pass out before bearing my Truth and Beauty, in honour of this life so splendid. Though I cry aloud, though I die in truthbirth, let it be.

*

I find, as I grope, that there is much meat in the ancient wisdom of men, much loveliness in their old troubled words. And though each must rediscover the whole world for himself,