460
PARTISAN REVIEW
with my colleagues and ponder the throat-digging nails of the lynx
and the pillars of the elephant; I sit
in
the Newberry and compas–
sionate with the tender girls who have never felt anything w,armer
than a washcloth upon them. And I feel that I and
all
these crea–
tures and persons are images of spirit, icons, symbols, versions and
formations.
But if you disagree, let us see for a moment how we compare
with the egg-born. You will admit, each and everyone, that they do
not have to be guided and are never lost anywhere. I admire how the
faintest light
in
the summer attic will bring the fine, secret mosquito
quivering from a long distance to the screen, just as the faintest
warmth of the gopher will fetch the rattler between the eyes and
make him strike. And I marvel at the Guiana spider that takes the
ants' disguise to perfection. But let me suggest to you, listeners, that
he comes into the world instructed in mimicry and belongs to the cast
of the giant creation that goes through a performance of days and ages
without a falter and without a rehearsal. Whereas we, fallible and in
need of instruction, train
in
a riot of boners and howlers; being crea–
tures
and
more, having hopes of brilliancy, having dread of Acheron,
hankering through endless series from the inane to the earth and
around the earth from end to end, embracing everything with in–
finite desire.
Infinite, infinite! Is it the desire of subject creatures any more?
No, it is not, this nonpareil longing. And, like everything else, it has
its health. That is glorious. It has its disease, too, and that is to digest
itself. Yes, we are the only ones who turn our appetite on ourselves,
and the most hopeful and outward-gentle the most of all. Too gentle
and abstaining to be predacious at large, with the humane eyes of
civilized self-consumption. The plans of Jerusalem are open before
them, but what haunts them is the eating mouth, the betrayal of
mercy in their own teeth and the insubordinate part of them facing
to Moloch and his capital.
What is this being gentle? Give me a little more time, every–
body, and think of it. Ah, it's a tragic, tearful subject, and I am
stripped naked when I come to it. A billion years of devouring are
behind us; will we even them up with as many of love and compas–
sion before the earthly time is up?
Don't take it amiss for frivolousness
if
I refer to the Walrus and
