then I say my eyes deceive me
for I know the reed was straight.
Finally, with regard to the other extreme mentioned in the title, I believe that a valid response to false solemnity and foolishness may not be simple humor but every degree of eccentricity, the eccentricity that is usually both solemn and sublime. For example: In the prologue to the 1961 UNAM edition of William Blake’s First Prophetic Books, Agustí Bartra cites the poet’s first biographer, who recorded the following incident: “Butt visited the Blakes one day and found the couple sitting in a small pavilion at the far end of their garden, completely divested of those troublesome coverings that have been in fashion ever since the Fall. ‘Come in!’ Blake called to him; ‘it is only Adam and Eve you see before you.’ Husband and wife, in a state of undress, were preparing to recite a few passages from Milton’s Paradise Lost.” It should be noted that as far as we are concerned, simply reading Paradise Lost would be considered highly eccentric.
Since we have begun to recall eccentrics, we ought to review certain cases of English extravagance that appeared several years ago in an issue of the magazine Du. Perhaps you may all decide to follow their example and wage your own war against “false” solemnity.
Edward Lear, the founder of nonsense, called himself Lord Defender of Gibberish and Absurdity, Great and Magnificent Peripatetic Ass, and Guiding Light of Foolishness. He was born in 1812, the youngest of twenty-one children. The basis of his nonsensical compositions was his play with English words and spelling. He was fascinated by fantastic, extravagant verbal wit, especially combinations of sound and sense. And yet, in addition to its value as entertainment, this kind of literary absurdity represented something more profound for Lear: It constituted an escape valve for the internal conflicts that grew out of his suffering and sorrow. On the other hand, he may have thought he had created the kind of literature worthy of the vast majority of human beings: With very few exceptions (among whom, of course, he counted himself), they were all idiots.
Francis Henry Egerton, Eighth Earl of Bridgewater (1756–1829), felt no love for his neighbor either; but he did love books and dogs. If he ever borrowed a book, he returned it in a special carriage escorted by four servants dressed in sumptuous livery. By the same token, his carriage might be occupied exclusively by dogs shod as elegantly as Egerton himself, who wore a new pair of shoes every day. His table was always set for a dozen of his favorite dogs. His shoes, arranged in meticulous rows, helped him keep track of his age.
Squire Mytton (1796–1894), who from his youth until the day of his death was the incarnation of extravagant absurdity, died of chronic alcoholism after having attempted to lead his horse down the same path. This horse, in fact, was his favorite drinking companion, and he shared many glasses of port with the animal. On one occasion Mytton set fire to his nightshirt in an attempt to cure an attack of hiccups. He soon recovered from the burns only to die of delirium tremens. (Following this example is especially recommended to “falsely” solemn people.)
Charles Waterton was the greatest and most ingenious eccentric of them all. He was a naturalist, a first-rate taxidermist, and a highly skilled tree climber. During the summer, he spent most of his time at the tops of the tallest trees in his garden, studying the habits of birds for hours. He delighted in scratching the back of his neck with the toes of his right foot. He was in the habit of walking on all fours under the table when he had guests, barking and growling like a dog. When he decided to take up the study of orangutans, he locked himself in a cage with an enormous representative of the species in order to cultivate a more intimate relationship. It was love at first sight. They embraced and kissed in a rapture of incomparable bliss. This wise man always slept on the floor with a log as his pillow. He would arise at half past three in the morning, spend an hour in the chapel of his house, and then begin the day’s scientific work.
Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741–1825) is an example of the eccentric who takes pleasure in everything that may heighten his reputation (the public is always ready to believe anything) for being a singularly dangerous and malicious character. This small man, with his leonine face, led a sober life and possessed uncommon energy for work, but he would startle his visitors by suddenly appearing as a horrible ghost, wearing his wife’s sewing basket on his head.
But let us return to our subject. There may be only two things that can make “false” solemnity seem ridiculous (not conquer it, because false solemnity is foolishness, and that is invincible): true solemnity and eccentricity.
La Rochefoucauld defined solemnity as “the body’s recourse for concealing failures of intelligence.” That’s fine, perhaps because it is a solemn phrase, like almost everything this extremely solemn man said.
The important thing is not to be falsely solemn yourself, to let the falsely solemn bury their own, and the authentically solemn (“Solemn,” says the Royal Academy, falsely solemn to its very core, “in its fourth meaning, signifies formal, grave, solid, valid”) be what they are, courageously and truthfully. Perhaps in a few of them there lies hidden a potential eccentric, unacknowledged until now, and capable of having himself mummified like Jeremy Bentham, whose full-length mummy can be viewed today inside a glass case in the University of London; or as the above-cited magazine adds, the martyr Thomas More, who always considered himself a great wit; or like Robert Burton, the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy; or like Laurence Sterne, author of the preposterous Tristram Shandy (which the falsely solemn have never dared to translate into Spanish); or finally, like John Stuart Mill, who wrote these words that are more relevant than ever:
“In our day, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend one’s knee to custom are a service in and of themselves. Precisely because the tyranny of public opinion is so great that it considers eccentricity ignominious, it is desirable, if only to put an end to that tyranny, for people to be eccentric. Eccentricity has always flourished wherever and whenever strength of character has flourished; and the amount of eccentricity prevailing in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental power, and moral value which that society contains. The fact that so few dare to be eccentric today constitutes the greatest danger for our time.”
WINNING THE STREET
To crush two clods with one fly.
An admirer of poetry who lives in San Blas has written to me in the hope that I will pass this information on to you: On the rare occasions when he comes to the capital, he has observed that a specific street, extending for many or only a few blocks but familiar to him for whatever reason, has suddenly had its name changed, which can sometimes cause him great inconvenience; but after careful thought this does not seem quite so illogical, since he has been informed it is now a practice widely accepted by the public — and that, after all, is what matters. And so instead of complaining, he would prefer to offer an idea that he not only dares to consider original, but that would have the further advantage of making, as the saying goes, a virtue of necessity and, at the same time, contributing to the general culture by increasing civic responsibility and notably encouraging creative activity (and even destructive activity, for life, he admits in resignation, is born of the eternal struggle between the forces of Good and Evil) among the citizenry and so, to make a long story short, and to put it as simply as possible, he proposes that when a poet publishes his first book of verse, and if the book is good, his name ipso facto, regardless of his wishes, is to be given to one of our longest and most beautiful boulevards (unless it is a main thoroughfare or a side street, which, as we shall soon see, makes implementation of his proposal difficult, for the fact is that these avenues generally are very far from having anything that could bring the slightest poetic notion even remotely to mind), on the condition that if each new book he publishes turns out to be inferior to the first and, in his case, to those that follow, his name will be removed from as many blocks as the Commission that will be created for this purpose shall deem fitting; and if the offense is repeated, from the same number of blocks again; and so on until, if he is not careful, by the end of his life (it is understood, of course, that he would be required by law to publish a book at fixed intervals1) the poet will see his transitory glory in this world extinguished; and, on the other hand, and in view of the fact that just as negligence combined with ineptitude deserves to be punished, so excellence is no less worthy of reward, if at the same time there appears (and this is in no way uncommon) a bad book by another fledgling poet, this poet’s name shall be affixed to the first block at the far end of the boulevard; and if, encouraged by this act of generosity, the second poet’s published work improves in the years that follow, his name shall be given to the same number of blocks being taken away at the other end from the poet who began brilliantly, so that both the punishment and the reward will be as fair as possible for both of them. Then, in an outburst of enthusiasm, and as if wanting to strengthen his arguments, he adds that even the most superficial consideration of the advantages of this method would be enough to appreciate the decisive impetus it would give, when applied to other branches of art and science, not only to the progress of the nation but to the progress of the entire world, an area where it would soon be imitated, above all if, moving away from the banalities of poetry, the system were to be tested if not on the most grave and transcendental, then on the most urgent problems of peace and war; and that it was worth contemplating what would happen if a great London avenue were to be named Mahatma Gandhi where it began and Lawrence of Arabia where it ended, or if a Parisian boulevard bore the name Albert Schweitzer at one end and Dwight D. Eisenhower at the other, and blocks were taken away and added each time one of them won or lost a battle; but, after some reflection, and thought, and more reflection, and more thought, he was fairly pessimistic in this regard, and therefore preferred that we ignore his digression and return, before he took his leave, to the firmer and much more concrete terrain of poetic creation.