It did not take me more than six weeks to give my first work to
the world. It was, as I had promised myself, a poem in forty-eight
cantos. True there were some negligences in it owing to the prodigious
fecundity with which I had written it; but I reckoned that the public
of to-day, accustomed as it is to the elegant literature at the foot of
the newspapers, would not reproach me with them.
I had a success worthy of myself, that is to say, without its like.
The subject of my work was nothing else than myself: in this respect
I conformed to the height of fashion of our day. I related my past
sufferings with a charming fatuity; I informed the reader of a thousand
domestic details of the most piquant interest; the description of
my mother’s bowl filled no less than fourteen cantos: I counted its
grooves, its holes, its lumps, its chips, its splinters, its nails, its
stains, its different colours, its reflections; I showed its inside,
its outside, its edges, its bottom, its sides, its inclined planes
and its level planes; passing to its contents, I gave studies of the
tufts of grass, the straws, the dried leaves, the little scraps of
wood, the pebbles, the drops of water, the remains of flies, the broken
cockchafers’ legs, which were to be found there; it was a ravishing
description. But do not imagine that I had it printed all in a piece;
there are impertinent readers who would have skipped it. I had cleverly
cut it into pieces, and worked it into the narrative in such a fashion
that none of it was lost; so that at the most interesting and most
dramatic moment, all of a sudden there came fifteen pages of bowl.
There, in my opinion, is one of the great secrets of the art, and, as
there is not the least trace of avarice about me, any one who likes may
profit by it.
All Europe was in a stir at the appearance of my book; it devoured the
intimate revelations which I condescended to communicate to it. How
could it have been otherwise? Not only did I enumerate all the facts
relative to my person, but I also gave the public a complete picture
of all the moonshine that I had passed through my head since the age
of two months; I had even intercalated, in the best place, an ode
composed by me in the egg. At the same time, it is needless to say that
I did not neglect, in passing, to discuss the great subject which is
occupying the world so much nowadays, to wit, the future of the human
race. This problem had struck me as interesting; in a leisure moment I
had sketched a solution of it, which passed generally for satisfying.
Every day people sent me compliments in verse, letters of
congratulation, and anonymous declarations of love. As for visits, I
adhered rigorously to the plan which I had traced for myself; my door
was shut to every one. Still, I could not debar myself from seeing two
strangers who announced themselves as relations of mine. One was a
blackbird from Senegal, and the other a blackbird from China.
“Ah, sir!” they said to me, embracing me like to choke me, “what a
great blackbird you are! How well you have depicted, in your immortal
poem, the deep-seated suffering of misunderstood genius! If we were
not as unappreciated as possible already, we should become so after
having read you. How we sympathize with your griefs, with your sublime
contempt of the vulgar. We also, sir, we know from our own experience
the secret pains which you have sung! Here are two sonnets which we
have composed, such as they are, and which we beg you to accept.”
“Here also,” said the Chinese, “is some music which my wife has
composed on a passage in your preface. It expresses the author’s
intention most wonderfully.”
“Gentlemen,” I said to them, “so far as I can judge, you appear to me
to be endowed with a great heart and an enlightened mind. But excuse me
asking you a question. Whence proceeds your melancholy?”
“Why, sir,” replied the inhabitant of Senegal, “look how I am built.
My plumage, it is true, is pleasant to look at, and I am clad in that
handsome green colour which is seen shining on ducks; but my beak is
too short and my foot too large; and see what a tail I am rigged out
with! The length of my body does not make two-thirds of it. Is that not
reason enough to wish oneself dead and done with?”
“And as for me, sir,” said the Chinese, “my misfortune is even more
distressing. My brother’s tail sweeps the streets; but the street-boys
point their finger at me because I have no tail at all.”
“Gentlemen,” I replied, “I pity you with all my soul; it is always
annoying to have too much or too little of anything, no matter what it
is. But permit me to tell you that in the Zoological Gardens there are
several persons who resemble you, and who have stayed there a long time
very peaceably, stuffed. Just as it is not enough for a woman author
to cast aside all modesty in order to write a good book, no more is
it enough for a blackbird to be discontented in order to have genius.
I am the only one of my kind; and I grieve over the fact; perhaps I am
wrong, but I am within my rights. I am white, gentlemen; become the
same, and we’ll see what you’ll be able to say.”