241
WRIGHT MORRIS
assorted noises all designed to disturb your sleep. Poltergeists.
My
query
is
not whether these ghosts are true or false, but whether they are
sensible or idiotic. What good is a disembodied spirit who can do no
more than a disgruntled milkman? Disturb your sleep. The way Luna–
Tiks disturb mine. I happen to love the moon both for what, and where,
it is. Its beauty lies in its inaccessibility. I don't doubt that man will
soon be there, and one day have its dark face lit up with signboards–
my question is,
is
this sensible or idiotic? Is it one of man's sublime
illusions, or a recurrently infantile delusion? That is my question, but
already, alas, I know the answer. The lips will smile and say,
we will
know when we get there.
Ah,
yes. The way we know about Everest,
now it is conquered, and the way we know about Hiroshima after the
bomb.
When a man lifts his eyes to the sky today, what does he see?
The moon a clinker, the sun a ball of gas, the planets orbiting prizes in
the war for space, possible sources of minerals, funerals, and interesting
suburban developments, just a few rocket hours from wherever you work.
Between a dream and a nightmare the line is as thin as the skin of
our teeth. A litmus test will not distinguish. Percentages will not help.
The old cloud of unknowing has been displaced by the haze of knowing
too much. Or is it too little? There seem to be opposing forms of
knowledge. To the
question-What
is
the grass?--one
man replies it
is the
flag
of his disposition, or the uncut hair of the graves. The other
man smiles. He finds that a very curious form of knowing. His eye on
the lens, the test tube, the spectrum, he seeks for the facts. The
facts?
Just what-for men-are the facts?
One man, Robert Graves, puts it like this--
'Nowadays' is a civilization in which the prime emblems of poetry are
dishonored. In which serpent, lion and eagle belong to the circus tent;
ox, salmon and boar to the cannery; racehorse and greyhound to the
betting ring; and the sacred grove to the sawmill. In which the moon is
despised as a burned-out satellite of the earth and woman reckoned as
'auxiliary State personnel.' In which money will buy almost anything
but the truth, and almost anyone but the truth possessed poet.
We speak often, 'nowadays,' of the American way of life. I should
like to ask if we think it is something more, or something less, than
human? The query is not idle. Life in space is not human life. It
will be man-made, but that, as we know, can be quite the contrary
of what we judge to be human. But not everyone is human. Not even
everybody seems to want to
be.
