A young Russian once, in the old nineteenth century days, revisited the
town he was born in, and took a look at the people. They seemed
stupid--especially the better classes. They had narrow-minded ideas of
what was proper and what wasn't. They thought it wasn't proper to love,
except in one prescribed way. They worried about money, and social
position and customs. The young Russian was sorry for them; he felt they
were wasting their lives. His own way of regarding the earth was as a
storehouse of treasures--sun, air, great thoughts, great experiences,
work, friendship and love. And life was our one priceless chance to
delight in all this. I don't say he didn't see much more to life than
enjoyment, but he did believe in living richly, and not starving
oneself.
The people he met, though, were starving themselves all the time.
Certain joys that their natures desired they would not let themselves
have, because they had got in the habit of thinking them wrong.
Well, of course this situation is universal; it's everywhere. Most men
and women have social and moral ideas which result in their starving
their natures. If they should, well and good. But if not, it is a
serious and ridiculous matter. It's especially hard upon those who don't
see what they are doing.
I know in my own case that I have been starved, more than once. I'm not
starved at the moment; but I'm not getting all I want either. So far as
the great joys of life go, I live on a diet. And when something reminds
me what splendors there may be, round the corner, I take a look out of
the door and begin to feel restless. I dream I see life passing by, and
I reach for my hat.
But a man like myself doesn't usually go at all far. His code is too
strong--or his habits. Something keeps the door locked. Most of us are
that way; we aren't half as free as we seem. When a man has put himself
into prison it is hard to get out.
To go back to this Russian, he was in a novel of Artzibashef's, called
Sanine. I thought at first that he might release me from my little jail.
But it is an odd thing: we victims get particular about being freed.
We're unwilling to be released by just any one: it must be the right
man. It's too bad to look a savior in the mouth, but it is highly
important. This man Sanine, for instance, was for letting me out the
wrong door.
I didn't see this at the start. In fact I felt drawn to him. I liked his
being silent and caustic and strong in his views. The only thing was,
he kept getting a little off-key. There was a mixture of wrongness in
his rightness that made me distrust him.
Sanine was in his twenties, and in order to get all the richness that
his nature desired, he had to attend to his urgent sexual needs. He
wasn't in love, but his sexual needs had to be gratified. In arranging
for this he recognized few or no moral restrictions. His idea was that
people were apt to make an awful mistake when they tried to build
permanent relations out of these fleeting pleasures. Even if there were
babies.
These views didn't commend themselves to some of Sanine's neighbors and
friends, or to that narrow village. They believed in family-life, and in
marrying, and all that kind of thing, and they got no fun at all out of
having illegitimate children. They had a lot of prejudices, those
people. Sanine gave them a chill. Among them was a young man named
Yourii; he's the villain of this book. He was not wicked, but stupid,
poor fellow. He was pure and proud of it. I hardly need state that he
came to a very bad end. And when they urged Sanine, who was standing
there at Yourii's burial, to make some little speech, he replied: "What
is there to say? One fool less in the world." This made several people
indignant, and the funeral broke up.
A friend of Sanine's named Ivanoff, went with him to the country one
day, and they passed some girls bathing in a stream there, without any
bathing suits.
[Illustration: He was pure and proud of it]
"Let's go and look at them," suggested Sanine.
"They would see us."
"No they wouldn't. We could land there, and go through the reeds."
"Leave them alone," said Ivanoff, blushing slightly.... "They're
girls ... young ladies.... I don't think it's quite proper."
"You're a silly fool," laughed Sanine. "Do you mean to say that you
wouldn't like to see them? What man wouldn't do the same if he had the
chance?"
"Yes, but if you reason like that, you ought to watch them openly. Why
hide yourself?"
"Because it's much more exciting."
"I dare say, but I advise you not to--"
"For chastity's sake, I suppose?"
"If you like."
"But chastity is the very thing that we don't possess."
Ivanoff smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.
"Look here, my boy," said Sanine, steering toward the bank, "if the
sight of girls bathing were to rouse in you no carnal desire, then you
would have the right to be called chaste. Indeed though I should be the
last to imitate it, such chastity on your part would win my admiration.
But, having these natural desires, if you attempt to suppress them, then
I say that your so-called chastity is all humbug."
This was one of the incidents that made me dislike Mr. Sanine. I liked
his being honest, and I liked his being down on prudery and humbug. But
I thought his theory of life was a good deal too simple. "Don't repress
your instincts," he said. That's all very well, but suppose a man has
more than one kind? If a cheap peeping instinct says "Look," and another
instinct says "Oh, you bounder," which will you suppress? It comes down
to a question of values. Life holds moments for most of us which the
having been a bounder will spoil.
The harmonizing of body and spirit and all the instincts into one, so
we'll have no conflicting desires, is an excellent thing--when we do it;
and we can all do it some of the time, with the will and the brains to.
But no one can, all the time. And when you are not fully harmonized, and
hence feel a conflict--different parts of your nature desiring to go
different ways--why, what can you do? You must just take your choice of
repressions.
As to Sanine, his life is worth reading, and--in spots--imitating. But I
thought he was rather a cabbage. A cabbage is a strong, healthy
vegetable, honest and vigorous. It's closely in touch with nature, and
it doesn't pretend to be what it isn't. You might do well to study a
cabbage: but not follow its program. A cabbage has too much to learn.
How our downright young moderns will learn things, I'm sure I don't
know. Sanine scornfully says "not by repression." Well, I don't think
highly of repressions; they're not the best method. Yet it's possible
that they might be just the thing--for a cabbage.
* * * * *
Long before Sanine was born--in the year 1440 in fact--there was a man
in India who used to write religious little songs. Name of Kabir. I
tried to read his books once, but couldn't, not liking extremes. He was
pretty ecstatic. I could no more keep up with him than with Sanine.
In his private life Kabir was a married man and had several children. By
trade he was a weaver. Weaving's like knitting: it allows you to make a
living and think of something else at the same time. It was the very
thing for Kabir, of course. Gave him practically the whole day to make
songs in, and think of religion. He seems to have been a happy
fellow--far more so than Sanine.
Sanine's comment would have been that Kabir was living in an imaginary
world, not a real one, and that he was autointoxicating himself with his
dreamings.
[Illustration: I couldn't keep up with Kabir]
Kabir's answer would have been that Sanine ought to try that world
before judging it, and had better begin by just loving people a little.
More love, and more willingness to deal with his poor fellow-creatures,
instead of flinging them off in impatience--that would have been Kabir's
prescription. And, as a fact, it might really have been an eye-opener
for Sanine.
Of the two, however, I preferred Sanine to Kabir. The trouble with Kabir
was, he wouldn't let you alone. He wanted everybody to be as religious
as he was: it would make them so happy, he thought. This made him rather
screechy.
He sang some songs, however, that moved me. Like many a modern, I'm not
religious; that is, I've no creed; but I don't feel quite positive that
this army of planets just happened, and that man's evolution from
blindness to thought was an accident and that nowhere is any
Intelligence vaster than mine.
Therefore, I'm always hoping to win some real spiritual insight. It has
come to other men without dogma (I can't accept dogmas) and so, I keep
thinking, it may some day come to me, too. I never really expect it next
week, though. It's always far off. It might come, for instance, I think,
in the hour of death. And here is the song Kabir sang to all men who
think that:
"_O Friend! hope for Him whilst you
live, know whilst you live, understand
whilst you live; for in life deliverance
abides._
"_If your bonds be not broken whilst
living, what hope of deliverance in death?_
"_It is but an empty dream, that the soul
shall have union with Him because it has
passed from the body:_
"_If He is found now, He is found then._
"_If not, we do but go to dwell in the
City of Death._
"_If you have union now, you shall have
it hereafter._"
* * * * *
Both Sanine and Kabir should have read Tarkington's novel, The Turmoil,
which is all about the rush and hustle-bustle of life in America. It
would have made them see what great contrasts exist in this world. Kabir
thought too much about religion. Sanine, of sex. Nobody in The Turmoil
was especially troubled with either. Some went to church, maybe, and
sprinkled a little religion here and there on their lives; but none
deeply felt it, or woke up in the morning thinking about it, or allowed
it to have much say when they made their decisions. And as to sex,
though there were lovers among them, it was only incidentally that they
cared about that. They satisfied nature in a routine way, outside office
hours. No special excitement about it. Nothing hectic--or magical.
Now, sex is a fundamental state and concern of existence: it's a primary
matter. If it's pushed to one side, we at least should be careful what
does it. And religion, too, God or no God, is a primary matter, if we
stretch the word to cover all the spiritual gropings of man. Yet what is
it that pushes these two great things aside in America? What makes them
subordinate? Business. We put business first.
And what is this business? What is the charm of this giant who engrosses
us so? In Tarkington's novel you find yourself in a town of neighborly
people, in the middle west somewhere; a leisurely and kindly
place--home-like, it used to be called. But in the hearts of these
people was implanted a longing for size. They wished that town to grow.
So it did. (We can all have our wishes.) And with its new bigness came
an era of machinery and rush. "The streets began to roar and rattle, the
houses to tremble, the pavements were worn under the tread of hurrying
multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of the faces was lost in
something harder and warier."
"You don't know what it means, keepin' property together these days,"
says one of them. "I tell you when a man dies the wolves come out of the
woods, pack after pack ... and if that dead man's children ain't on the
job, night and day, everything he built'll get carried off.... My Lord!
when I think of such things coming to _me_! It don't seem like I
deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I
have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards
to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
bigger.... What's the use of my havin' worked my life and soul into my
business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and scattered, soon as I'm
in the ground?"
* * * * *
Poor old business! It does look pretty sordid. Yet there is a soul in
this giant. Consider its power to call forth the keenness in men and to
give endless zest to their toil and sharp trials to their courage. It is
grimy, shortsighted, this master--but it has greatness, too.
Only, as we all know, it does push so much else to one side! Love,
spiritual gropings, the arts, our old closeness to nature, the
independent outlook and disinterested friendships of men--all these must
be checked and diminished, lest they interfere. Yet those things are
life; and big business is just a great game. Why play any game so
intently we forget about life?
Well, looking around at mankind, we see some races don't. The yellow and
black--and some Latins. But Normans and Saxons and most Teutons play
their games hard. Knight-errantry was once the game. See how hard they
played that. The Crusades, too,--all gentlemen were supposed to take in
the Crusades. Old, burly, beef-crunching wine-bibbers climbed up on
their chargers and went through incredible troubles and dangers--for
what? Why, to rescue a shrine, off in Palestine, from the people who
lived there. Those people, the Saracens, weren't doing anything very
much to it; but still it was thought that no gentleman ought to stay
home, or live his life normally, until that bit of land had been
rescued, and put in the hands of stout prelates instead of those
Saracans.
Then came the great game of exploring new lands and new worlds. Cortez,
Frobisher, Drake. Imagine a dialogue in those days between father and
son, a sea-going father who thought exploration was life, and a son who
was weakly and didn't want to be forced into business. "I don't like
exploration much, Father. I'm seasick the whole time, you know; and I
can't bear this going ashore and oppressing the blacks." "Nonsense, boy!
This work's got to be done. Can't you see, my dear fellow, those new
countries _must_ be explored? It'll make a man of you."
So it goes, so it goes. And playing some game well _is_ needful, to make
a man of you. But once in a while you get thinking it's not quite
enough.