PART THREE

SELECTED PASSAGES FROM BORZOI BOOKS

HOW HE DIED[4]

_By Conrad Aiken_

When Punch had roared at the inn for days The walls went round in a ringing haze, Miriam, through the splendour seen, Twinkled and smiled like Sheba’s Queen, Jake was the devil himself, the host Scratched in a book like a solemn Faust; And the lights like birds went swiftly round With a soft and feathery whistling sound. He seized the table with one great hand And a thousand people helped him stand, “Good-night!” a thousand voices said, The words like gongs assailed his head, And out he reeled, most royally, Singing, amid that company.— Luminous clocks above him rolled, Bells in the darkness heavily tolled, The stars in the sky were smoothly beating In a solemn chorus, all repeating The tick of the great heart in his breast That tore his body, and would not rest.

Singing, he climbed the elusive street, And heard far off his footsteps beat; Singing, they pushed him through the door, And he fell full length on the darkened floor.... But his head struck sharply as he fell And he heard a sound like a broken bell; And then, in the half-light of the moon, The twittering elvish light of June, A host of folk came round him there,— Sheba, with diamonds in her hair, Solomon, thrumming a psaltery, Judas Iscariot, dark of eye, Satan and Faustus and Lorraine, And Heliogabalus with his train.... The air was sweet with a delicate sound Of silk things rustling on the ground, Jewels and silver twinkled, dim, Voices and laughter circled him.... After a while the clock struck two, A whisper among the audience flew, And Judy before him came and knelt And kissed him; and her lips, he felt, Were wet with tears.... She wore a crown, And amethysts, and a pale green gown.... After a while the clock struck three And Polly beside him, on one knee, Leaned above him and softly cried, Wearing a white veil like a bride. One candle on the sill was burning, And Faustus sat in the corner, turning Page after page with solemn care To count the immortal heartbeats there. Slow was the heart, and quick the stroke Of the pen, and never a word he spoke; But watched the tears of pale wax run Down from the long flame one by one. Solomon in the moonlight bowed, The Queen of Sheba sobbed aloud; Like a madonna carved in stone Judy in starlight stood alone: Tears were glistening on her cheek, Her lips were awry, she could not speak. After a while the clock struck four, And Faustus said “I can write no more: I’ve entered the heartbeats, every one, And now the allotted time is done.” He dipped his pen, made one more mark, And clapped his book. The room grew dark. At four o’clock Punch turned his head And “I forgive you all,” he said.... At five o’clock they found him dead.

FROM “YOUTH AND EGOLATRY”[5]

_By Pío Baroja_

_Goethe_

If a militia of genius should be formed on Parnassus, Goethe would be the drum-major. He is so great, so majestic, so serene, so full of talent, so abounding in virtue, and yet, so antipathetic!

_Chateaubriand_

A skin of Lacrymae Christi that has turned sour. At times the good Viscount drops molasses into the skin to take away the taste of vinegar; at other times, he drops in more vinegar to take away the sweet taste of the molasses. He is both moth-eaten and sublime.

_Victor Hugo_

Victor Hugo, the most talented of rhetoricians! Victor Hugo, the most exquisite of vulgarians! Victor Hugo—mere common sense dressed up as art.

_Balzac_

A nightmare, a dream produced by indigestion, a chill, rare acuteness, equal obtuseness, a delirium of splendours, cheap hardware, of pretence and bad taste. Because of his ugliness, because of his genius, because of his immorality, the Danton of printers’ ink.

_Poe_

A mysterious sphinx who makes one tremble with lynx-like eyes, the goldsmith of magical wonders.

_Dickens_

At once a mystic and a sad clown. The Saint Vincent de Paul of the loosened string, the Saint Francis of Assisi of the London Streets. Everything is gesticulation, and the gesticulations are ambiguous. When we think he is going to weep, he laughs; when we think he is going to laugh, he cries. A remarkable genius who does everything he can to make himself appear puny, yet who is, beyond doubt, very great.

_Sainte Beuve_

Sainte Beuve writes as if he had always said the last word, as if he were precisely at the needle of the scales. Yet I feel that this writer is not as infallible as he thinks. His interest lies in his anecdote, in his malevolent insinuation, in his bawdry. Beyond these, he has the same Mediterranean features as the rest of us.

_Ruskin_

He impresses me as the Prince of Upstarts, grandiloquent and at the same time unctuous, a General in a Salvation Army of Art, or a monk who is a devotee of an esthetic Doctrine which has been drawn up by a Congress of Tourists.

_A Word from Kuroki, the Japanese_

“Gentlemen,” said General Kuroki, speaking at a banquet tendered to him in New York, “I cannot aspire to the applause of the world, because I have created nothing, I have invented nothing. I am only a soldier.”

If these are not his identical words, they convey the meaning of them.

This victorious, square-headed Mongolian had gotten into his head what the dolichocephalic German blond, who, according to German anthropologists is the highest product of Europe, and the brachycephalic brunette of Gaul and the Latin and the Slav have never been able to understand.

Will they ever be able to understand it? Perhaps they never will be able.

_Love of the Workingman_

To gush over the workingman is one of the commonplaces of the day which is utterly false and hypocritical. Just as in the 18th century sympathy was with the simple hearted citizen, so today we talk about workingman. The term workingman can never be anything but a grammatical common denominator. Among workingmen, as among the bourgeoisie, there are all sorts of people. It is perfectly true that there are certain characteristics, certain defects, which may be exaggerated in a given class, because of its special environment and culture. The difference in Spanish cities between the labouring men and the bourgeoisie is not very great. We frequently see the workingman leap the barrier into the bourgeoisie, and then disclose himself as a unique flower of knavery, extortion and misdirected ingenuity. Deep down in the hearts of our revolutionists, I do not believe that there is any real enthusiasm for the workingman.

When the bookshop of Fernando Fé was still in the Carrera de San Jerónimo, I once heard Blasco Ibáñez say with the cheapness that is his distinguishing trait, laughing meanwhile ostentatiously, that a republic in Spain would mean the rule of shoemakers and of the scum of the streets.

FROM “THE ROMANTIC WOMAN”[6]

_By Mary Borden_

Now that I’ve got back to the beginning, the night of the 10th of September, 1913, I find that I’ve told you all sorts of things, almost everything of importance, except just what happened that night. I’m afraid, in telling the story, I’ve got into rather a muddle. It’s so difficult to keep distinct what I felt and knew at various times, and what I feel and know now. Now the war is on us, and my chief feeling is one of fear, not any definite fear of Zeppelins or invasions, but a vague, dreadful fear, an acute sense of insecurity. The world is shaking, and its convulsions give one a feeling of having, to put it vulgarly, gone dotty. It’s as though I saw all the tables and chairs in my room moving about and falling over. Everything that was stable and was made to hang on to, and sit down upon, and lean against, is lurching. The great business of life seems to be to sit tight, but one has a suspicion that even the law of gravity may be loosed and that we shall find ourselves falling off the earth. Before the 4th of August, people in their secure little houses were enjoying their miseries and making capital out of their difficulties, and splendidly gambling on the future—the dark future that seemed so possible. Now it is all changed. It appears that the conduct of life is largely a matter of unconscious calculations. One says good-bye and calculates that the chances are a hundred to one, that one will meet this friend again. But when I said good-bye to Binky the other day at the one o’clock from Victoria, the chances were a hundred to one against his coming back. It’s a curious thing to have all the mathematics of life upset. It makes one feel like being in a mad-house. The laughter of Arch and Humpy rising in shrieks from the gardens seems incredible and wonderful. The security of childhood becomes the most precious thing on earth.

So you see how difficult it is to remember what my feelings were in 1913. I have told you about how the American quartette descended on us at Saracens, and I’ve told you about my clairvoyant moment at dinner, when I saw through them all as though an X-ray machine had been turned on them. I don’t want to go into all the complex impressions of their personalities and the queer, surcharged atmosphere that their minds altogether there, created in the house, because Louise’s wretched mind dominated them all for me as the evening went on, just as her voice drowned their voices and her tragedy eclipsed their little troubles. Phyllis and Binky may have been under a strain; no doubt they were. Pat may have been uncomfortable, though I don’t believe he was. Claire, undoubtedly, drew a certain sinister satisfaction from Phil’s helplessness. But all those things scarcely count at all compared to the dreadful tension stretched over Louise and Jim. I had a feeling of something drawn round them, very tight, enclosing them in a space like the inside of a balloon, where the gases of their misery and distrust swelled to bursting. And the final act was just the bursting of a bubble that had been strained too long. And it seems, now, scarcely more important in the sum total of the world’s tragedy than the bursting of a toy balloon, buyable for a penny, and in competition with the roar of armaments, scarcely more noisy.

And yet, if we are immortals, all of us, then it was, of course, much more than that, and the amount of pain that was mine afterward, and the cowardly giving in to the hopeless boredom of life that resulted from it, all that will be balanced up against me, I suppose. I suppose my giving in to Ruffles, when I knew there was nothing in it, will be laid up against me. I don’t know. I don’t care very much. It’s so difficult to decide whether that sort of thing really matters. To my father it would matter so terribly, and to Binky it would—it did—matter so little. I could never tell from his manner whether he accepted it in knowledge or was altogether unaware. But it’s curious that Louise should have accused me of the thing that hadn’t happened and was not going to, because my father came to see us.

OCTOBER[7]

_By Robert Bridges_

April adance in play met with his lover May where she came garlanded. The blossoming boughs o’erhead were thrill’d to bursting by the dazzle from the sky and the wild music there that shook the odorous air.

Each moment some new birth hasten’d to deck the earth in the gay sunbeams. Between their kisses dreams: And dream and kiss were rife with laughter of mortal life.

But this late day of golden fall is still as a picture upon a wall or a poem in a book lying open unread. Or whatever else is shrined when the Virgin hath vanished; Footsteps of eternal Mind on the path of the dead.

“LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS”[8]

_By Louis Couperus_

When the letters of Raden Adjeng Kartini were published in Holland, they aroused much interest and awakened a warm sympathy for the writer. She was the young daughter of a Javanese Regent, one of the “princesses” who grow up and blossom in sombre obscurity and seclusion, leading their monotonous and often melancholy lives within the confines of the Kaboepatin, as the high walled Regent’s palaces are called.

The thought of India, or as we now say, perhaps more happily, Java, had a strange fascination for me even as a child. I was charmed by the weird mystery of its stories which frightened even while they charmed me. Although I was born in Holland, our family traditions had been rooted in Java. My father began his official career there as a Judge, and my mother was the daughter of a Governor General, while my older brothers had followed their father’s example and were officials under the Colonial Government.

At nine years of age I was taken to the inscrutable and far off land round which my early fancy had played; and I passed five of my school years in Batavia. At the end of those five years I felt the same charm and the same mystery. The thought of Java became almost an obsession. I felt that while we Netherlanders might rule and exploit the country, we should never be able to penetrate its mystery. It seemed to me that it would always be covered by a thick veil, which guarded its Eastern soul from the strange eyes of the Western conqueror. There was a quiet strength “Een Stille Kracht”[9] unperceived by our cold business-like gaze. It was something intangible, and almost hostile, with a silent, secret hostility that lurked in the atmosphere, in nature and above all, in the soul of the natives. It menaced from the slumbering volcanoes, and lay hidden in mysterious shadows of the rustling bamboos. It was in the bright, silver moonlight when the drooping palm trees trembled in the wind until they seemed to play a symphony so gentle and so complaining that it moved me to my soul. I do not know whether this was poetic imagination ever prone to be supersensitive, or in reality the “Quiet Strength,” hidden in the heart of the East and eternally at war with the spirit of the West. It is certainly true that the Javanese has never been an open book to the Netherlander. The difference of race forms an abyss so deep that though they may stand face to face and look into each other’s eyes, it is as though they saw nothing.

The Javanese woman of noble birth is even more impenetrable. The life of a Raden Adjeng or a Raden Adjoe is a thing apart. Even the Dutch officials and rulers of the country know nothing of the lives of these secluded “princesses,” as we like to call the wives and daughters of the Regents, though they themselves lay no claim to a title which in Europe ranks so high.

Suddenly a voice was heard from the depths of this unknown land. It rose from behind the high protecting wall that had done its work of subjection and concealment through the ages. It was gentle, like the melodious song of a little bird in a cage—in a costly cage it is true, and surrounded by the tenderest care, but still in a cage that was also a prison. It was the voice of Raden Adjeng Kartini, which sounded above the walls of the close-barred Kaboepatin. It was like the cry of a little bird that wanted to spread its wings free in the air, and fly towards life. And the sound grew fuller and clearer, till it became the rich voice of a woman.

She was shut in by aristocratic traditions and living virtually imprisoned as became a young “princess” of Java; but she sang of her longing for life and work and her voice rose clearer and stronger. It penetrated to the distant Netherlands, and was heard there with wonder and with delight. She was singing a new song, the first complaint that had ever gone forth from the mysterious hidden life of the Javanese woman. With all the energy of her body and soul she wanted to be free, to work and to live and to love.

Then the complaint became a song of rejoicing. For she not only longed to lead the new life of the modern woman, but she had the strength to accomplish it, and more than that, to win the sympathy of her family and of her friends for her ideals. This little “princess” lifted the concealing veil from her daily life and not only her life, her thoughts were revealed. An Oriental woman had dared to fight for feminism, even against her tenderly loved parents. For although her father and mother were enlightened for noble Javanese, they had at first strongly opposed her ideas as unheard of innovations.

She wanted to study and later to become a teacher to open a school for the daughters of Regents, and to bring the new spirit into their lives. She battled bravely, she would not give up; in the end she won.

Raden Adjeng Kartini freed herself from the narrow oppression of tradition, and the simple language of these letters chants a paean “From Darkness into Light.”[10] The mist of obscurity is cleared away from her land and her people. The Javanese soul is shown simple, gentle, and less hostile than we Westerners had ever dared to hope. For the soul of this girl was one with the soul of her people, and it is through her that a new confidence has grown up between West and the East, between the Netherlands and Java. The mysterious “Quiet Strength” is brought into the light, it is tender, human and full of love and Holland may well be grateful to the hand that revealed it.

This noble and pure soul was not destined to remain long upon earth. Had she lived, who knows what Raden Adjeng Kartini might not have accomplished for the well being of her country and her people; above all, for the Javanese women and the Javanese child. She was the first Regent’s daughter to break the fixed tradition in regard to marriage; it was customary to give the bride to a strange bridegroom, whom she had never seen, perhaps never even heard of, until her wedding day. Kartini chose her own husband, a man whom she loved, but her happy life with him was cut short by her early death.

It is sometimes granted to those whom the gods love to bring their work to fruition in all the splendour of youth, in the springtime or the summer of their lives. To have worked and to have completed a great task, when one is young, so that the world is left richer for all time—is not that the most beautiful of all the gifts of the gods?

APRIL’S CHARMS[11]

_By William H. Davies_

When April scatters coins of primrose gold Among the copper leaves in thickets old, And singing skylarks from the meadows rise, To twinkle like black stars in sunny skies;

When I can hear the small woodpecker ring Time on a tree for all the birds that sing; And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long— The simple bird that thinks two notes a song;

When I can hear the woodland brook, that could Not drown a babe, with all his threatening mood: Upon whose banks the violets make their home, And let a few small strawberry blossoms come;

When I go forth on such a pleasant day, One breath outdoors takes all my care away; It goes like heavy smoke, when flames take hold Of wood that’s green and fill a grate with gold.