You're joking, he said. You're over modest.
That's where you're mistaken, I said. I'm anything but modest. I'm a rank egotist, that's what I am. But I'm also a realist, at least with myself.
You underrate yourself, said Reb. I'm going to hand you back your own words—don't look down on your- self!
O.K. You win.
He was heading for the door. Suddenly I had an impulse to unburden myself.
Wait a moment, I said. There's something I want to tell you.
He trotted back to the table and stood there, like a messenger boy. All attention. Respectful attention. I wondered what he thought I was about to tell him.
When you came in a few minutes ago, I began, I was in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a long paragraph. Would you like to hear it? I leaned over the machine and reeled it off for him. It was one of those crazy passages which I myself couldn't make head nor tail of. I wanted a reaction, and not from Pop or Mona.
I got it too, immediately.
Miller! he shouted. Miller, that's just marvelous! You sound like a Russian. I don't know what it means but it makes music.
You think so? Honestly?
Of course I do. I wouldn't lie to you.
That's fine. Then I'll go ahead. I'll finish the paragraph.
Is the whole book like that?
No, damn it! That's the trouble. The parts I like nobody else will like. At least, not the publishers.
To hell with them! said Reb. If they won't take it I'll publish it for you, with my own money.
I wouldn't recommend that, I replied. Remember, you're not to throw your money away all at once.
Miller, if it took my last cent, I'd do it. I'd do it because I believe in you.
Don't give it another thought, I said. I can think of better ways to spend your money.
Not me! I'd feel proud and happy to launch you. So would my wife and children. They think very highly of you. You're like one of the family to them.
That's good to hear, Reb. I hope I merit such confidence. Tomorrow, then, eh? Let's bring something good for the darkies, what?
When he had gone I began pacing up and down, quietly, containedly, pausing now and then to gaze at a woodblock, or a colored reproduction (Giotto, della Francesca, Uccello, Bosch, Breughel, Carpaccio), then pacing again, becoming more and more pregnant, standing still, staring into space, letting my mind go, letting it rest where it willed, becoming more and more serene, more and more charged with the gravid beauty of the past, pleased with myself to be part of this past (and of the future too), felicitating myself on living this womb or tomb sort of existence ... Yes, it was indeed a lovely room, a lovely place, and everything in it, everything we had contributed to make it habitable, reflected the inner loveliness of life, the life of the soul.
You sit there with your thoughts and you're king of the world. This innocent remark of Reb's had lodged in my brain, given me such equanimity that for a spell I felt factually knew what it meant—to be king of the world. King! That is, one capable of rendering homage to high and low; one so sentient, so perceptive, so illumined with love that nothing escaped his attention nor his understanding. The poetic intercessor, in short. Not ruling the world but worshiping it with every breath.
Standing again before the everyday world of Hokusai ... Why had this great master of the brush taken the pains to reproduce the all too common elements of his world? To reveal his skill? Nonsense. To express his love, to indicate that it extended far and wide, that it included the staves of a barrel, a blade of grass, the rippling muscles of a wrestler, the slant of rain in a wind, the teeth of a wave, the backbone of a fish ... In short, everything. An almost impossible task, were it not for the joy involved.
Fond of Oriental art, he had said. As I repeated Reb's words to myself suddenly the whole continent of India rose up before me. There, amidst that swarming beehive of humanity, were the palpitating relics of a world which was and will ever remain truly stupefying. Reb had taken no notice, or had said nothing if he did, of the colored pages torn from art books which also adorned the walls: reproductions of temples and stupas from the Deccan, of sculptured caves and grottoes, of wall paintings and frescoes depicting the overwhelming myths and legends of a people drunk with form and movement, with passion and growth, with idea, with consciousness itself. A mere glance at a cluster of ancient temples rising from the heat and vegetation of the Indian soil always gave me the sensation of gazing at thought itself, thought struggling to free itself, thought becoming plastic, concrete, more suggestive and evocative, more awe-inspiring, thus deployed in brick or stone, than ever words could be.
As often as I had read his words, I was never able to commit them to memory. I was hungry now for that flood of torrential images, those great swollen phrases, sentences, paragraphs—the words of the man who had opened my, eyes to this stupefying creation of India: Elie Faure. I reached for the volume I had thumbed through so often—Vol. II of the History of Art—and I turned to the passage beginning—For the Indians, all nature is divine ... What does not die, in India, is faith ... Then followed the lines which, when I first encountered them, made my brain reel.
In India there came to pass this thing: that, driven forth by an invasion, a famine, or a migration of wild beasts, thousands of human beings moved to the north or to the south. There at the shore of the sea, at the base of a mountain, they encountered a great wall of granite. Then they all entered the granite; in its shadows they lived, loved worked, died, were born, and, three or four centuries afterward, they came out again, leagues away, having traversed the mountain. Behind them they left the emptied rock, its galleries hollowed out in every direction, its sculptured, chiseled walls, its natural or artificial pillars turned into a deep lacework with ten thousand horrible or charming figures, gods without number and without name, men, women, beasts—a tide of animal life moving in the gloom. Sometimes when they found no clearing in their path, they hollowed out an abyss in the center of the mass of rock to shelter a little black stone. It is in these monolithic temples, on their dark walls, or on their sunburnt facade, that the true genius of India expends all its terrific force. Here the confused speech of confused multitudes makes itself heard. Here man confesses unresistingly his strength and his nothingness...
