The Square
The Rulers of the World
An Agreeable and Useful Function
Again with you, my unknown reader; I talk to you as though you
were, let us say, my old comrade, R-13, the poet with the lips of a
negro,--well, everyone knows him. Yet you are somewhere on the moon,
or on Venus, or on Mars. Who knows you? Where and who are you?
Imagine a square, a living, beautiful square. Imagine that this
square is obliged to tell you about itself, about its life. You
realize that this square would hardly think it necessary to mention
the fact that all its four angles are equal. It knows this too
well. This is such an ordinary, obvious thing. I am in exactly
the same square position. Take the pink checks for instance,
and all that goes with them: for me they are as natural as the
equality of the four angles of the square. But for you they are
perhaps more mysterious and hard to understand than the binom of
Newton. Let me explain: an ancient sage once said a clever thing
(accidentally, beyond doubt). He said, "Love and Hunger rule the
world." Consequently, to dominate the world, man had to win a
victory over hunger after paying a very high price. I refer to the
great Two Hundred Years' War, the war between the city and the land.
Probably on account of religious prejudices, the primitive peasants
stubbornly held on to their "bread."[1] In the 35th year before the
foundation of the United State, our contemporary petroleum food was
invented. True, only about two-tenths of the population of the globe
did not die out. But how beautifully shining the face of the earth
became when it was cleared of its impurities!
[1] This word came down to us for use only as a poetic form, for the
chemical constitution of this substance is unknown to us.
Accordingly the 0.2 which survived, have enjoyed the greatest
happiness in the bosom of the United State. But is it not clear that
supreme bliss and envy are only the numerator and the denominator
respectively, of the same fraction, happiness? What sense would the
innumerable sacrifices of the Two Hundred Years' War have for us
if a reason were left in our life for jealousy? Yet such a reason
persisted because there remained button-like noses and classical
noses (_Cf_: our conversation during the promenade). For there were
some whose love was sought by everyone and others whose love was
sought by no one.
Naturally, having conquered hunger (that is, algebraically speaking,
having achieved the total of bodily welfare), the United State
directed its attack against the second ruler of the world, against
love. At last this element also was conquered, that is, organized
and put into a mathematical formula. It is already three hundred
years since our great historic Lex Sexualis was promulgated: "A
Number may obtain a license to use any other Number as a sexual
product."
The rest is only a matter of technique. You are carefully examined
in the laboratory of the Sexual Department where they find the
content of the sexual hormones in your blood, and they make out for
you accordingly a Table of sexual days. Then you file an application
to enjoy the services of Number so and so, or Numbers so and so. You
get for that purpose a check-book (pink). That is all.
It is clear that under such circumstances there is no more reason
for envy or jealousy. The denominator of the fraction of happiness
is reduced to zero and the whole fraction is thus converted into
a magnificent infiniteness. The thing which was for the ancients
the source of innumerable stupid tragedies has been converted in
our time into an harmonious, agreeable and useful function of the
organism, a function like sleep, like physical labor, the taking
of food, digestion, etc., etc. Hence you see how the great power
of logic purifies everything it happens to touch. Oh, if only you
unknown readers can conceive this divine power! If you will only
learn to follow it to the end!
It is very strange: while I was writing today of the loftiest
summit of human history, all the while I breathed the purest
mountain air of thought, but within me it was and remains cloudy,
cobwebby, and there is a kind of cross-like, four-pawed X. Or
perhaps it is my paws and I feel like that only because they are
always before my eyes, my hairy paws. I don't like to talk about
them. I dislike them. They are a trace of a primitive epoch. Is it
possible that there is in me...?
I wanted to strike out all this because it trespasses on the limits
of my synopsis. But then I decided: no, I shall not! Let this diary
give the curve of the most imperceptible vibrations of my brain,
like a precise seismograph, for at times such vibrations serve as
forewarnings.... Certainly this is absurd! This certainly should be
stricken out; we have conquered all the elements; catastrophes are
not possible any more.
Now everything is clear to me. The peculiar feeling inside is a
result of that very same square situation of which I spoke in the
beginning. There is no X in me. There can be none. I am simply
afraid lest some X will be left in you, my unknown readers. I
believe you will understand that it is harder for me to write than
it ever was for any author throughout human history. Some of them
wrote for contemporaries, some for the future generations but
none of them ever wrote for their ancestors, or beings like their
primitive, distant ancestors.