"And instincts."
"I know the argument. I see what you're after."
"What?"
"That human might is too small to pit against the un-solvables. Our nature, mind's nature, is weak, and only the heart can be relied on."
"What a rush you're in, @ccloseph. I didn't say that."
"But you must have meant it. Reason has to conquer itself. Then what are we given reason for? To discover the blessedness of unreason? That's a very poor argument."
"You're inventing a case against me. You're to be congratulatedon your conclusions, but they're off the point.
However, you've had a hard time."
"Am having."
"Quite so."
"And will continue to have."
"Of course. You must be prepared for it."
"I am. I am."
"It's sensible of you to expect so little."
"But it's sad, you must admit."
"It's a matter of knowing how much to ask for."
"How much?"
"I'm talking about happiness."
"I'm talking about asking to be human. We're not worse than the others."
"What others?"
"Those who preved it possible to be human."
"Ah, in the pa."
"Listen, To 4s Raison..4ussi.
We abuse the present too much, don't you think so @8@?
"You're not so fond of it."
"Fond! What a word!"
"Alienated, then."
"That's bad, too."
"It's popular."
"There's a lot of talk about alienation. It's a fool's plea."
"Is it?"
"You can divorce your wife or abandon your child, but that can you do with yourself?"
"You can't banish the world by decree if it's in you.
Is that it, Joseph?"
"How can you? You have gone to its schools and seen its movies, listened to its radios, read its magazines. What if you declare you are alienated, you say you reject the Hollywood dream, the soap opera, the cheap thriller? The very denial implicates you."
"You can decide that you want to forget these things."
"The world comes after you. It presents you with a gun or a mechanic's tool, it singles you out for this part or that, brings you ringing news of disasters and victories, shunts you back and forth, abridges your rights, cuts off your uture, is clumsy or crafty, oppressive, treacherous, murderous, black, whorish, venal, inadvertently naive or funny. Whatever you do, you cannot dismiss it."
"What then?"
"The failing may be in us, in me. A weakness of vision."
"Aren't you asking too much of yourself?"
"I'm serious."
"Where shall I put these pips?"
"I'm sorry; have you been holding them? Here, in this ash tray. I'm telling you. It's too easy to abjure it or detest it. Too narrow. Too cowardly."
"If you could see, what do you think you would see?"
"I'm not sure. Perhaps that we were the feebleminded children of angels."
"Now you're just amusing yourself, Joseph."
"Very well, I would see where those capacities have gone to which we once owed our greatness."
"That would be tragic."
"I don't say it wouldn't be. Have you any tobacco?"
"No,"
"Or paper? If I had paper I could roll a cigarette out of these butts."
"I'm sorry I came empty-handed. If you're not alienatedWhy do you quarrel with so many people?
I know you're not a misanthrope. Is it because they force you to recognize that you belong to their world?"
"I was wrong, or else put it badly. I didn't say there was no feeling of alienation, but that we should not make a doctrine of our feeling."
"Is that a public or a private belief?88I don't understand you.88What about politics @8@?
"Do you want to discuss politics with me? With me? Now?"
"Since you refuse to subscribe to alienation, perhaps you might be interested in changing existence."
"Ha, ha, ha! Have you any ideas?"
"It's really not my place, you know @?
"I know, but you started it.88My position. You don't understand.88Oh, I do."
"So, about changing existence '@.
"I never enjoyed being a revolutionary."
"No? Didn't you hate anyone?"
"I hated, but I didn't enjoy. As a matter of fact "
"Yes-"
"You're so attentive-. I regarded politics as an in138 ferior activity. Plato tells us that if everything were as it should be, the best men would avoid office, not vie for it."
"They did once vie for it."
"They did. Public life is disagreeable.
It's forced on one."
"I often hear that complaint. But all this is neither here nor there as far as measures to be taken are concerned."
"But with whom, under what circumstances, how, towardwhat ends?"
"Ah, that's it, isn't it? With whom."
"You don't believe in the historic roles of classes, do you?"
"You keep forgetting. My province is…"
"Alternatives. Excuse me. With whom, to go on. A terrible, unanswerable question. With men dispersed into separate corners, incommunicado? One of their few remainingliberties is the liberty to wonder what will happen next."
"Still, if you had the power to see '@.
"Just to look in my coat for a cigarette; I may have left one there."
"If you could see it that way."
"There isn't a smoke in the house."
"Over-all @?
"You mean, if I were a political genius.
I'm not. Now what do you face?"
"What to do under the circumstances."
"Try to live."
"How?"
"Ttt @. is Raison zlussi, you're not giving much help. By a plan, a program, perhaps an obsession."
"An ideal construction."
"A German phrase. And you with a French name."
"I have to be above such prejudices."
"Well, it's a lovely phrase. An ideal construction, an obsessive device. There have been innumerable varieties: for study, for wisdom, bravery, war, the benefits of cruelty, for art; the God-man of the ancient cultures, the Humanistic full man, the courtly lover, the knight, the ecclesiastic, the despot, the ascetic, the millionaire, the manager. I could name hundreds of these ideal constructions, each with its assertions and symbols, each finding-in conduct, in God, in art, in money-its particular answer and each proclaiming: "This is the only possible way to meet chaos." Even someone like my friend Steidler is under the influence of an ideal construction of an inferior kind. It is inferior because it is loosely" made and littlo thought has gone into it.
Nevertheless it is real. He would willingly let go everything in his life that is not dramatic. Only he has, I am afraid, a shallow idea of drama.
Simple, inevitable things are not dramatic enough for him. He has a notion of the admirable style. It is poor stuff. Nobility of gesture is what he wants. And, for-all his boasted laziness. he is willing to pursue his ideal until his eyes burst from his head and his feet from his shoes."
"Do you want one of those constructions, Joseph?"
"Doesn't it seem that we need. them?"
"I don't know."
"Can't get along without them?"
"If you see it that way."
"Apparently we need to give ourselves some exclusive focus, passionate and engulfing."
"One might say that."
"But what of the gap between the ideal construction and the real world, the truth?"
"Yes, @, @.@?
"How are they related?"
"An interesting problem."
"Then there's this: the obsession exhausts the man.
It can become his enemy. It often does."
"H'm."
"What do you say to all this?"
"What do I say?"
"Yes, what do you think? You just sit there, looking at the ceiling and giving equivocal answers."
"I haven't answered I'm not supposed to give answers."
"No. What an inoffensive career you've chosen."