108
PARTISAN REVIEW
In the year 1892, and in that disreputable district of Prague,
Ben Haas, who was by then known as the Master, met a young man
who asked to have a talk with him. The Master, tom between the
ethical and the poetic principle (the former telling him to refuse, the
second to consent), sat down with him in a squalid tavern and
ordered two glasses of Passover vodka, apparently part of the ritual.
Yeshua Krochal, for such was the young man's name, confided to
the Master that he had begun to frequent the district since he had
picked up one of his writings and read about experience being "asex–
ual, that is, amoral," but that he had been unable to find the spiritual
equilibrium preached in
Summer and the Desert.
The Master was over–
come with anguish and and remorse when he realized that his
teachings, like every doctrine based on morality, were liable in im–
mature hands to cause as much harm as good. (For, as Plato re–
marks, a master chooses his disciple, but a book does not choose its
reader.) Carried away by an infernal impulse and possibly by the
vodka as well (if not merely unconsciously wishing to parody
Pygmalion, as Frankel would have it), Ben Haas decided to tum an
insignificant being- the disciple had not answered a single of the
Master's veiled questions - into a Hasid (in the sense of one who is
"initiated," "learned," "meek"). The young man confessed that
Sum–
mer and the Desert
had given him the moral strength to frequent
brothels, since he looked upon the process primarily as an "act of ex–
perience," though he was aware of the fact that the "act of ex–
perience" was of no value unless it served a creative function. Ben
Haas abruptly set his vodka glass down on the table when he heard
the title of the book Yeshua Krochal was writing:
The
Road to Canaan.
During the course of the evening, however, the man called the
Master came to see that his future disciple had all the traits which,
had he listened to the voice of reason, would have dissuaded him
from taking him under his wing, for stupidity combined with ambi–
tion is more dangerous than any insanity. He nonetheless arranged
for them to meet in three months' time at the same tavern and left
him with a list of twenty-seven books devoted to the miracle at Ca–
naan and salvation.
At the end of November, Yeshua Krochal appeared at the ap–
pointed place with his
Road to Canaan,
a manuscript of approximately
one hundred and twenty pages, over which the Master cast a
fleeting,
all-encompassing
glance, noted the fine penmanship, and
picked out several spelling errors at random. He then scheduled
