70
PARTISAN REVIEW
apple to Venus: his soul-it is awful to look at-is seated
in
his
elbow. Su,ch mistakes," he added, interr:upting himself, "are un–
avoidable, since we have eaten of the tree of knowledge. But Paradise
is bolted, and the cherub is behind us; we must make a voyage around
the earth and see if, perhaps, it is open again at the back."
I laughed. Obviously, I thought, the spirit cannot err, when
there is no spirit. But I remarked that he had still other things on
his mind, and begged him to go on.
"In addition," he said, "these puppets have the advantage of
being immune to the force of gravity. They know nothing of the
inertia of matter, that quality which is the most antipodal to the
dance, because the force which raises them into the air is greater
than the one that keeps them enchained to the earth. What would
our good G. not give, if she were sixty pounds lighter, or a weight
of
this
size came to her aid in her pirouettes? The puppets need
only the ground, like elves, to touch it and revivify the soaring of
the limbs and to recover from the effort of the dance; a moment
which obviously is not itself a dance, and with which nothing further
can be done than to make it vanish, if possible."
I said that, albeit he handled his paradoxes cleverly, he would
never make me believe that
in
a mechanical puppet there could be
more grace than in the structure of the human body.
He replied that it would be practically impossible for man to
attain even approximately to mechanical being; only a God could
measure himself with matter in this field, and here is the point where
both ends of the circular world meet and join each other.
I grew more and more astonished and did not know what to
say to such strange assertions.
Apparently, he said, while taking a bit of snuff, I had not read
the third chapter of the Book of Moses very attentively: and who–
ever did not know that primary period of human culture, could not
really discuss the following and, even less, the ultimate things.
I told him I was very well aware what disorders
in
the natural
harmony of men were Created by consciousness. A young man of my
acquaintance, I said, had as it were, lost his innocence before my
very eyes, and had never afterwards recovered it, in spite of all
kinds of imaginable efforts. "But," I added, "what consequences
can you draw from that?"
He asked me what type of incident I had in mind? About three
years ago, I said, I was swimming in the company of a young man,
about whose culture there were marvelous stories in those
days.
He
may have been about sixteen years old, and only from very far away
