Youth and Egolatry Part 10

These pious souls and good Christians imagined that I might need that work in order to earn my living, so in the odour of sanct.i.ty they did whatever lay in their power to deprive me of my means of support. Oh, n.o.ble souls! Oh, ye of great heart! I salute you from a safe distance, and wish you the most uncomfortable beds in the most intolerable wards set apart for scurvy patients, in any hospital of your choosing, throughout the world.

THIRST FOR GLORY

Fame, success, popularity, the illusion of being known, admired and esteemed, appeal in different ways to authors. To Salvador Rueda, glory is a triumphant entrance into Tegucigalpa, where he is taken to the Spanish Casino, and crowned with a crown of real laurel. To Unamuno, glory is the a.s.surance that people will be interested in him at least a thousand years after he is dead. And to others the only glory worth talking about is that courted by the French writer, Rabbe, who busied himself in Spain with la _gloire argent comptant_. Some yearn for a large stage with pennons and salvos and banners, while others are content with a smaller scene.

Ortega y Ga.s.set says that to me glory reduces itself to the proportions of an agreeable dinner, with good talk across the table.

And he is right. To mingle with pleasant, intelligent, cordial persons is one of the more alluring sorts of fame.

There is something seductive and ingratiating about table talk when it is spirited. A luxurious dining room, seating eight or ten guests, of whom three or four are pretty women, one of whom should be a foreigner; as many men, none of them aristocrats--generally speaking, aristocrats are disagreeable--nor shall we admit artists, for they are in the same cla.s.s as the aristocrats; one's neighbour, perhaps, is a banker, or a Jew of aquiline feature, and then the talk touches on life and on politics, relieved with a little gallantry toward the ladies, from time to time allowing to each his brief opportunity to s.h.i.+ne--all this, beyond doubt, is most agreeable.

I like, too, to spend an afternoon conversing with a number of ladies in a comfortable drawing room, which is well heated. I visualize the various rewards which are meted out by fame as being housed invariably under a good roof. What is not intimate, does not appeal to me.

I have often seen Guimera in a cafe on the Rambla in Barcelona, drinking coffee at a table, alone and forlorn, in the midst of a crowd of shop clerks and commercial travellers.

"Is that Guimera?" I asked a Catalan journalist.

"Yes."

And then he told me that they had tendered him a tremendous testimonial some months previously, which had been attended by I don't know how many hundreds of societies, all marching with their banners.

I have no very clear idea of just what Guimera has done, as it is many years since I have gone to the theatre, but I know that he is considered in Catalonia to be one of the glories of the country.

I should not care for an apotheosis, and then find myself left forlorn and alone to take my coffee afterwards with a horde of clerks.

I may never write anything that will take the world by storm--most probably not; but if I do, and it occurs to my fellow townsmen to organize one of these celebrations with flags, banners and choral societies, they need not count upon my attendance. They will not be able to discover me even with the aid of Sherlock Holmes.

When I am old, I hope to take coffee with pleasant friends, whether it be in a palace or a porter's lodge. I neither expect nor desire flags, committees, nor waving banners.

Laurel does not seduce me, and you cannot do it with bunting.

ELECTIVE ANTIPATHIES

As I have expressed my opinions of other authors sharply, making them public with the proper disgust, others have done the same with me, which is but logical and natural, especially in the case of a writer such as myself, who holds that sympathy and antipathy are of the very essence of art.

My opponents and myself differ chiefly in the fact that I am more cynical than they, and so I disclose my personal animus quite ingenuously, which my enemies fail to do.

I hold that there are two kinds of morality; morality of work and morality of play. The morality of work is an immoral morality, which teaches us to take advantage of circ.u.mstances and to lie. The morality of play, for the reason that it deals with mere futilities, is finer and more chivalrous.

I believe that in literature and in all liberal arts, the morality should be the morality of play, while my opponents for the most part hold that the morality of literature should be the morality of work. I have never, consciously at least, been influenced in my literary opinions by practical considerations. My ideas may have been capricious, and they are,--they may even be bad,--but they have no ulterior practical motive.

My failure to be practical, together, perhaps, with an undue obtuseness of perception, brings me face to face with critics of two sorts: one, esthetic; the other, social.

My esthetic critics say to me:

"You have not perfected your style, you have not developed the technique of your novels. You can scarcely be said to be literate."

I shrug my shoulders and reply: "Are you sure?"

My social critics reproach me for my negative and destructive views. I do not know how to create anything, I am incapable of enthusiasm, I cannot describe life, and so on.

This feeling seems logical enough, if it is sincere, if it is honest, and I accept it as such, and it does not offend me.

But, as some of my esthetic critics tell me: "You are not an artist, you do not know how to write," without feeling any deep conviction on the subject, but rather fearing that perhaps I may be an artist after all and that at last somebody may come to think so, so among my critics who pose as defenders of society, there are those who are influenced by motives which are purely utilitarian.

I am reminded of servants shouting at a man picking flowers over the garden wall, or an apple from the orchard as he pa.s.ses, who raise their voices as high as possible so as to make their officiousness known.

They shout so that their masters will hear.

"How dare that rascal pick flowers from the garden? How dare he defy us and our masters? Shall a beggar, who is not respectable, tell us that our laws are not laws, that our honours are not honours, and that we are a gang of accomplished idiots?"

Yes, that is just what I tell them, and I shall continue to do so as long as it is the truth.

Shout, you l.u.s.ty louts in gaudy liveries, bark you little lap-dogs, guard the gates, you government inspectors and carabineers! I shall look into your garden, which is also my garden, I shall make off with anything from it that I am able, and I shall say what I please.

TO A MEMBER OF SEVERAL ACADEMIES

A certain Basque writer, one Senor de Loyarte, who is a member of several academies, and Royal Commissioner of Education, a.s.sails me violently upon social grounds in a book which he has published, although the attack is veiled as purely literary.

Senor de Loyarte is soporific as a general rule, but in his polite sortie against me, he is more amusing than is usual. His malice is so keen that it very nearly causes him to appear intelligent.

In literature, Senor de Loyarte--and why should Senor de Loyarte not be a.s.sociated with literature--presents the figure of a fat, pale, flabby boy in a priests' school, skulking under the skirts of a Jesuit Father.

Senor de Loyarte, like those little, chubby-winged cherubs on sacristy ceilings, shakes his arrowlet at me and lets fling a _billet doux_.

Senor de Loyarte says I smack of the cadaver, that I am a plagiarist, an atheist, anti-religious, anti-patriotic, and more to boot.

I shall not reply for it may be true. Yet it is also true that Senor de Loyarte's n.o.ble words will please his n.o.ble patrons, from whom, perhaps, he may receive applause even more substantial than the pat on the shoulder of a Jesuit Father, or the smile of every good Conservative, who is a defender of the social order. His book is an achievement which should induct Senor de Loyarte into members.h.i.+p in several more academies. Senor de Loyarte is already a Corresponding Member of the Spanish Academy, or of the Academy of History, I am not quite sure which; but they are all the same. Speaking of history, I should be interested to know who did first introduce the sponge.

Senor de Loyarte is destined to be a member, a member of academies all his life.

IV

ADMIRATIONS AND INCOMPATIBILITIES