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PARTISAN REVIEW
center of the composition, its overtones dying away in a serpentine line
of assistant professors. In
The Fall ot Icarus
the serpentine line is, of
course, composed of sheep. Slightly ahead of the Chairman, clearing a
path for him, walked his Executive Officer, like the ploughman's ox, a
stouter, less imaginative version of the ploughman. The Executive Of–
ficer held a notebook and was checking off names while the Chairman
watched the antics of his pencil with detached amusement. Close behind
them walked one of his professors, wistful, with a face like a shepherd's,
though he had the splotchy red skin and timid steps of a man with a
bad heart. They went in a double line: the Chairman with his Executive
Officer, the professor with an associate professor who would inherit
his
courses when he died. The associate professor was taller, healthier, and
duller than the professor. He had a surer hold on life, but he walked
with the air of a man who cannot understand what has happened to
him. He had too many children, too many hours of teaching, too many
unfinished research projects, and not enough money to live on. Even–
tually he would inherit both the professorship and the bad heart. But
as the line wound out into the amorphous background, it included men
with less hope and confidence than these; in that serpentine line trailing
down to the sea there were assistant professors with little prospect of
promotion, instructors who had not published enough and were there–
fore about to be fired, graduate assistants hovering desperately under
the Chairman's protection, though he only half remembered their names.
And there was no certain point at which the main group came to an
end. It blended into the crowd. It lost itself among those with no hopes
whatever, no talent and no prospect. The tail of the serpentine line
touched the underworld of the Mezzanine; it sank in the surface of
the watery background of faces, and it was there that I saw Icarus
drowning.
In the departmental procession, nearly everybody wore glasses, but
not the Chairman. The Executive Officer peered through thick ground
lenses; the professor wore pince-nez on a black ribbon; the associate
professor wore horn-rimmed glasses repaired with adhesive tape. But the
Chairman looked benignly through dark little eyes comfortably set
in
smooth pink fat. He was taller than the rest, pleasanter, more famous,
more untiring, still young and ambitious, a man without apparent de–
fect. Though he was unmarried and seemed to have no friends, no one
could say he was lonely. A deep enough devotion can overcome any
amount of loneliness, and energy can take the place of love. Though he
did not understand people he had a thorough knowledge of books. It
is
an excellent quality in an administrator that he not understand people;
