PARTISAN REVIEW
age inertia and
dim
the horizons, that a new sensibility and new thought
should come into being, a sensibility and thought that will not
im–
mediately petrify in each of their achievements but will remain forever
plastic, freely moving in infinity. Then there will appear those gay
wanderers, men poor in spirit, carefree and curious, about whom you
speak; at present they do not exist or merely seem to exist; at present no
one passes, like a stranger,
by
the altars and idols, but you too, my
friend, without knowing it, sacrifice on many altars and unconsciously
worship idols, for the poison, I say, is in our blood. And I do not want
to rivet mankind to the horizontal plane-it is you who write: "Let us
advance, without looking around and without measuring the way." What
I
say is: individuality on this plane is the vertical line along which a
new culture must rise.
M.G.
IX.
To M. 0. Gershenzon:
The dialogue between us is becoming difficult; it has turned into an
argument, which incidentally should not have happened. By nature, my
dear friend, you are a monologuist. You cannot be lured onto the paths
of dialectic; for you, logic is not a law. You are not interested in your
self-contradictions, a list of which I could present to you as others pre–
sent bills, if my taste did not advise me to refrain from this type of at–
tack on the inward,
psychic
sense of your confessions. Still, after all,
we agreed that truth must not become compulsive. What then is left to
me? To sing and play on my reed pipe? "We have piped unto you, and
ye have not danced, we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lam–
ented"-thus the children of the parable in the Gospels call unto their
fellows, but we consider that we are no longer children. "Well sung,"
you will say. with a kind smile to the singer, and continue past him on
your way. "Happy journey to the promised land"-one feels like calling
after you, for you yourself mention it; and it is the promised land, of
course, that you rave about-its grapes and fig trees ("they shall sit
every man under his vine and under his fig tree," as is said in the Bible),
its abundant pastures and cool springs, but where it is and how it is
exactly-perhaps it lies beyond this phenomenal world-you do not
seem to want to know: all that you desire is to reach it (for one must
absolutely reach it, that is why it is the "promised" land) or at least
behold it from Mount Nebo, for the "triple image of perfection" shines
in it. And you will not exchange your nomadic restlessness and your burn–
ing thirst for cool water-the ancient thirst born of forty years of
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