There was another case.
A man, thinking himself a poet, wrote verse. But for some reason it was poor verse, and the circumstance disconcerted him.
Walking in the street one day, he saw a whip lying in the road, lost by a cabman. An inspiration came to the poet, and the following image at once formed itself in his mind:—
“In the road, in the dust, the snake lies,
Like a whip in the dust of the road.
In a swarm, like a cloud, come the flies,
And the ants and their kind in a swarm.
Thro’ the skin, like the links of a chain,
Show the ribs—they show white thro’ the skin.
O dead snake, thou remind’st me again
Of my love, my dead love, O dead snake.”
Suddenly the whip stood up on end and, swaying, said to him:
“Why are you telling lies? You are a married man, you know how to read and write, yet you are telling lies. Your love has not died. You love your wife and you are afraid of her.”
The poet became angry.
“That is no business of yours.”
“And the verses are poor.”
“They are better than you could make. You can only crack, and even that you cannot do by yourself.”
“But, anyhow, why do you tell lies? Your love did not die.”
“All kinds of things happen—it was necessary it should.”
“Oh, your wife will whip you. Take me to her.”
“Oh, you may wait.”
“Well, well, go your own way,” said the whip, curling itself up like a corkscrew; it lay down in the road and began to think of other people. The poet went to an inn, ordered a bottle of beer, and began to think about himself.
“Although the whip was decidedly rude, the verse is poor again, that’s true enough. How strange it is! One person always writes bad verse, while another sometimes succeeds in writing verse that is good. How badly everything is arranged in this world! What a stupid world it is!”
So he sat and drank, trying to arrive at a clearer conception of the world. He came to the conclusion at last that it was necessary to speak the truth. This world is good for nothing, and it really disgusts a man to live in it. He thought about an hour and a half in this strain, and then he wrote:
“For all their pleasant seeming, our desires
A dread scourge are that drives us to our doom;
Blindly we blunder thro’ the maze where waits us
Death, the fell serpent, in the murky gloom.
Oh! let us strangle our insensate longings!
They do but lure us from the appointed way;
Lead us thro’ thorns to our most bitter ruing,
Leave us heartbroken in the twilight grey.
And in the end full surely Death awaits us,
Lives there the man but knows that he must die?”
He wrote more in the same spirit—twenty-eight lines in all.
“That’s good!” exclaimed the poet; and went home quite satisfied with himself.
At home he read the lines to his wife. She liked them. She merely said:
“There is something wrong with the first four lines.”
“They will swallow it all right. Pushkin too began rather badly. But what do you think of the metre? It is that of a requiem.”
Then he began to play with his little son: he put him on his knee and, tossing him up, sang in a poor tenor:
“Tramp, tramp,
On somebody’s bridge!
When I grow rich
I will pave my own bridge,
And nobody else
Shall walk over my bridge.”
They spent the evening merrily, and the next morning the poet took his verses to an editor, who spoke in a profound manner (these editors are all profound—that is why their magazines are so dry)?
“H’m!” said the editor, rubbing his nose. “You know, this is not altogether bad, and, what is more important, it is quite in the spirit of the times. Very much so. You seem to have discovered yourself. You must continue in the same strain. Sixteen copecks a line…four…forty-eight. I congratulate you.”
The verses were printed, and the poet felt as if he had had another birthday. His wife kissed him fervently, and said dreamily:
“Oh, my poet!”
They had a great time. But a youth, a very good youth, who was earnestly seeking the meaning of life, read these verses and shot himself dead.
He was quite convinced, you see, that, before denouncing life, the poet had sought the meaning as long as he himself had done, and that the search had been attended by sorrow, as in his own case. The youth did not know that these sombre thoughts were sold at the rate of sixteen copecks a line. He was an earnest youth.
Let not the reader think I mean that even a whip can, at times, be used on people to their advantage.