“Well, you may be right, but I cannot take up so objective a point of view. In me indignation overbears any gentler artistic sentiment. Yet more: I think it is not now the time to enjoy Art, or to plunge into the deep and subtle analyses of Estheticism. What we want at the present time is Action.”
“But, for myself, I quiet my conscience with the fact, which I know to be true, that I am living now just as I should live in that future when, as Ferri says, all are from the very outset to have equal opportunities for their development.”
Smilowicz is pleased.
“Ah, then you understand. … I was afraid you had been surprised at my friendship for Obojanski, seeing the way I am accustomed to talk. But, you know, if scientific work were properly remunerated, Obojanski’s monographs would bring him in enough money to live as sumptuously as he is doing now. So he arrives at the very same result, though by different roads. Yet that, unfortunately, is paltering with principles.”
Oh, I should not object, so far as I am concerned, to any such “paltering!” As things stand, I am working too much: I might work less and do something better. … All my talent is quite thrown away on those everlasting accounts.
My dream is now, how to make more money. And this renders me somewhat uneasy; perhaps it is on account of pecuniary circumstances that I am now considering the possibility of marriage with Janusz, in case Roslawski. …
This I should not like. Not because it would show my character in an ignoble light. That’s nonsense. No, but it would mark how little I care for the creature I could take on such terms.
I am of those whose sin is greater than the sin of Eve and Adam: I have eaten of the fruit of the knowledge that there is neither good nor evil.
Yes, for I have gone on—on to the very end. Everyone has something he can call his own. Sufferers magnify in their mind the power of suffering; those who have abandoned everything make a god of their strength of will to do so. But I have nothing left, nothing absolutely. Of beauty I have not enough to love that beauty in myself. Wisdom is wisdom from one standpoint only: that lost, its very idea ceases to exist. I have too much mind to be artful and mysterious, so I strike no one as being uncommon. I have all the shortcomings of a perfect sage; for I believe in nothing, and am indifferent to all things. But I am not, as sages are, encyclopaedic, nor do I love knowledge, nor have I any. At the same time, I do not, like a typical Decadent, hug myself at the thought of my doubts and of my indifference. Quite the contrary—to others, nay, even to myself, I play the part of one that is blithe, well-favoured, happy, and quite satisfied with being what I am. This is not because I deliberately try to keep my secret to myself, but because merriment is to my mind less wearisome than the apathy of doubt. And I have not as my own even what I say here, for I am not sure that it is true. …
Roslawski … ? Well, say I am attracted by the interest of an experiment.
Out of which I am making a grave and important affair, simply because of my love for some pathos in life. …
Why, Janusz himself can be “distinguished” on certain occasions.
Madame, (he writes),
May I venture to remind you that the period chosen by you, within which to give me a definite answer, will have come to an end on Monday next?
I beg to remain, Madame,
Yes, the time has come. I shall go to Obojanski’s tonight.
Here I have come, with fevered lips and ice-cold heart, only to find that Roslawski went away but a quarter of an hour ago, having to dine with some friends this evening.
I still can smell in the air the brand of cigars that he smokes. … My eyebrows and lids are twitching as if agitated by some witch’s spell.
Yet I experience not the least disappointment at not finding him here: rather a sense of relief, that I can put the affair off a little longer.
Obojanski tells me what a favourite of Roslawski I am, and goes so far as to hint—in jest—that he is in love with me. This very evening he was asking why I have paid no visit to my old Professor for such a length of time. This, for a man of his sort, must mean a great deal.
In the main, however, Obojanski is this evening in a pessimistic and quarrelsome mood. He blames me for too readily taking up with new trends of thought: which does me great harm. There is no contemporary poet equal to Homer: I ought therefore to be somewhat more deeply read in the works of the old classics, which reflect such a healthy feeling of harmony between body and mind.
“You are,” he says, “daily less mindful of the admirable maxim, Mens sana in corpore sano.”
“Why, no; I decidedly uphold proper care of the body, to make it hardy and healthy, and able to resist the wear and tear of our now over-subtle and oversensitive minds.”
“Yes, but nowadays our very minds are diseased.”
“Well, then, let my motto be: ‘In a sound body, a diseased mind!’ ”
Or what people may choose to call diseased.
Scholars and thinkers, though they surely must have made some studies in logic, yet reason thus by analogy: Disease of the body is any departure from its normal state: consequently, any but an average mind is diseased. But if they start from the premise that mind and body are identical, then why reason at all on the matter?
Now I would burst into song, to run about in the open country, flooded with the white low sunbeams, and to utter cries of joy.
Why? Because the old Professor
