THE HYPNOTIZED PEOPLE
121
no castes, only crafts. It was, shall we say, a kind of highly organ–
ized and more dogmatic guild socialism. It is inevitable, of course,
that modern India must industrialize, so that there would be no
sense at all in talking of Hinduism today as a composite way of
life for a nation. It is possible, however, that one of the ancient
crafts
may survive, the
craft
of being a Brahmin. This hope
is
based on the attitude of the Brahmin not to derive any profit from
his work, his austerity,
his
aptitude for rigorous living, his sense
of greater responsibility to the community. I mean the word
Brahmin to stand for the most imaginative kind of living I know;
I use it to indicate the function of an artist in Indian society.
ANSWERING QUESTIONS AFTER
THE MODERN POETRY LECTURE
Um-m, yes. Yes, it's obscure
to you, poor boor (and to poor
me). Yet where, where in the macro-circus
is
there any bright thing, or dark, cross-purposed
any the less? And again, say, why
of all poor beasts, should boor-you and boor-I
be the only ones, ever, absolutely
sure that the bright or dark we think we see
is there, absolutely? Let's live
terribly dangerously. For if
this poor micro-chaos scares us so
what in the world will we ever dare know?
M. L.
Rosenthal
