0480
PARTISAN REVIEW
writer had to smile at himself for a moment. He realized that he
had just been thinking how profitless it was to worry about a new
poem to spring, since it had all long ago been said unsurpassably–
but when he thought about the foot of the dancing child, the light,
charming movement of the brown shoes, the neatness of the dance
figure they described on the carpet and how, nevertheless, over
all
this pretty grace and assurance hung a trace of embarrassment, a
fragrance of maidenly shyness, then it was clear to him that one
need only sing a song to that childish foot in order to surpass
all
that earlier poets had said about spring and youth and the presenti–
ment of love. But his thoughts had barely strayed into this field, he
had barely begun to toy with the idea of a poem "To a Foot in a
Brown Shoe," when he realized with horror that the whole dream
was beginning to slip from him again, that the blissful pictures were
growing insubstantial and melting away. Alarmed he forcibly con–
trolled his thoughts, and yet he realized that at this moment, al–
though he had written down the content of the dream, it did not
any longer belong to him completely, that it was beginning to grow
alien and old. And he immediately realized, too, that this would
always be so: that these enchanting pictures would only belong to
him and fill his soul with their fragrance as long as he dwelt upon
them wholeheartedly, without ulterior thought, without design, with–
out anxiety.
Thoughtfully the poet started on his way home, carrying the
dream before him like an infinitely complex, infinitely fragile toy
of thinnest glass. He was full of concern about his dream. Oh if he
could only succeed in reconstructing completely within himself the
figure of his dream beloved! To restore the whole from the brown
shoe, the dancing figure, the shimmer of brown in the little one's
face, from these few, precious fragments, seemed more important to
him than anything else in the world. And was it not in fact infinitely
important to him? Had not this charming spring figure been promised
to him as his beloved, had she not been born out of the deepest and
best springs of his soul, had she not come to meet him as a symbol
of his future, as a presentiment of what fate held in store for him?–
And while he was filled with concern, he was nevertheless infinitely
happy in the depths of
his
being. Was it not marvelous that one
could dream such things, that one bore within oneself this world
of airiest magic stuff, that inside our souls where we have so often
