I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance
of Mr. A.E. Housman in the Summer of 1927. I spent two hours with
him, and before that I had been to the home of Thomas Hardy. Mr.
Hardy told me how much he thought of Housman, before I visited Housman;
and Housman was a frequent visitor at the Hardy home. Their ideas
of life were very much alike; they were what the orthodox people
and the Rotary Clubs would call pessimistic. They didn't live on
pipe dreams; they took the universe as they found it, and man as
they found him. They tried to see what beauty there was in each
of them, but didn't close their eyes to the misery and maladjustments
of either the universe or man, because they ware realists, honest,
thorough, and fearless.
Hardy himself had received the censure of all the good people of England
and the world, who, in spite of that, bought his books. They all condemned
him when he wrote his 'Tess;' so he determined not to write any more prose.
He thought that people probably were not intelligent enough to appreciate
him; certainly not his viewpoint, and he didn't wish to waste his time
on them.
Housman's viewpoint is much the same, as all of you know. He has written
very little. You can read all he has written in two hours, and less than
that; but everything is exquisitely finished. met him he was in his study
in Cambridge. He is a professor of Latin. I can't Imagine anything more
useless than that -- unless it be Greek! He has been called the greatest
Latin scholar in the world, and he seemed to take some pride in his Latin;
not so much in his poetry. He said he didn't write poetry except when he
felt he had to, it was always hard work for him, although some of the things
he wrote very quickly; but as a rule he spent a great deal of time on most
of them.
I asked him if it was true that the latest little volume was what it
is entitled -- 'Last Poems.' He said he thought it was true; that it had
been published as his last poems in 1922 -- five years before -- and he
had only written four lines since: so he thought that would probably be
the last. Upon my asking him to recite the four lines, he said he had forgotten
them.
Both Hardy and Housman, and of course Omar, believed that man is rather
small in comparison with the universe, or even with the earth; they didn't
believe in human responsibility, in free will, in a purposeful universe,
in a Being who watched over and cared for the people of the world. It is
evident that if He does, He makes a poor job of it!
Neither Hardy nor Housman had any such delusions. They took the world
as they found it and never tried to guess at its origin. They took man
as they found him and didn't try to build castles for him after be was
dead. They were essentially realists, both of them; and of course long
before them Omar had gone over the same field.
It is hardly fair to call the Rubaiyat the work of Omar Khayyam. I have
read a good many different editions and several different versions. I never
read it in Persian, in which it was first written, but I have read not
only poetical versions but prose ones. Justin McCarthy brought out a translation
a number of years ago which was supposed to be a literal translation of
Omar's book. There is no resemblance between that book and the classic
under his name that was really written by FitzGerald. There is nothing
very remarkable about the Omar Khayyam as found in Justin McCarthy's translation.
It is probably ten times as expansive as the one we have, and no one would
recognize it from the FitzGerald edition.
The beauty of the Rubaiyat is Edward FitzGerald's. He evidently was
more or less modest or else he wanted to do great homage to Omar, because
no one would ever have suspected that Omar had any more to do with the
book than they would have suspected Plato. But, under the magic touch of
FitzGerald, it is not only one of the wisest and most profound pieces of
literature in the world, but one of the most beautiful productions that
the world has ever known.
I remember reading somewhere that when this poem was thrown on the market
in London, a long time ago, nobody bought it. They finally put it out in
front of the shop in the form in which it was printed and sold it for a
penny. One could make more money by buying those books at a penny and selling
them now than he could make with a large block of Standard Oil! It took
a long while for Omar and FitzGerald to gain recognition, which makes it
rather comfortable for the rest of us who write books to give away, and
feel happy when somebody asks us for one, although we suspect they will
never read them. But we all think we will be discovered sometime. Some
of us hope so and some are fearful that they will be. Neither Omar nor
FitzGerald believed in human responsibility. That is the rock on which
most religions are founded, and all laws -- that everybody is responsible
for his conduct; that if he is good he is good because he deliberately
chooses to be good, and if he is bad it is pure cussedness on his part
-- nobody had anything to do with it excepting himself. If he hasn't free
will, why, he isn't anything! The English poet Henley, in one of his poems,
probably expressed this about as well as anybody. It looks to me as if
he had a case of the rabies or something like that. But people are fond
of repeating it. In his brief poem about Fate he says:
A fine captain of his soul; and a fine master of his fate! He wasn't
master enough of his fate to get himself born, which is rather important,
nor to do much of anything else, except brag about it. Instead of being
the captain of his soul, as I have sometimes expressed it, man isn't even
a deck-hand on a rudderless ship! He is just floating around and trying
to hang on, and hanging on as long as he can. But if it does him any good
to repeat Henley, or other nonsense, it is all right to give him a chance
to do it, because he hasn't much to look forward to, any way. Free will
never was a scientific doctrine; it never can be. It is probably a religious
conception, which of course shows that it isn't a scientific one.
Neither one of these eminent men, Hardy or Housman, believed anything
in free will. There is eight hundred years between Omar and Housman, and
yet their, philosophy is wondrously alike. I have no doubt but that Omar's
philosophy was very like what we find in the rendering of FitzGerald. It
is not a strange and unusual philosophy, except in churches and Rotary
Clubs and places like that. It is not strange in places where people think
or try to, and where they do not undertake to fool themselves. It is rather
a common philosophy; it is a common philosophy where people have any realization
of their own importance, or, rather, unimportance. A realization of it
almost invariably forces upon a human being his own insignificance and
the insignificance of all the other human atoms that come and go.
Men's ideas root pretty far back. Their religious creeds are very old.
By means of interest and hope and largely fear, they manage to hang on
to the old, even when they know it is not true. The idea of man's importance
came in the early history of the human race. He looked out on the earth,
and of course he thought it was flat! It looks flat, and he thought it
was. He saw the sun, and he formed the conception that somebody moved it
out every morning and pulled it back in at night. He saw the moon, and
he had the opinion that somebody pulled that out at sundown and took it
in in the morning. He saw the stars, and all there was about the stars
was, "He made the stars also." They were just "also."
They were close by, and they were purely for man to look at, about like
diamonds in the shirt bosoms of people who like them.
This was not an unreasonable idea, considering what they had to go on.
The people who still believe it have no more to go on. Blind men can't
be taught to see or deaf people to hear. The primitive people thought that
the stars were right near by and just the size they seemed to be. Of course
now we know that some of them are so far away that light traveling at nearly
286,000 miles a second is several million light years getting to the earth,
and some of them are so large that our sun, even, would be a fly-speck
to them. The larger the telescopes the more of them we see, and the imagination
can't compass the end of them. It is just humanly possible that somewhere
amongst the infinite number of infinitely larger and more important specks
of mud in the universe there might be some organisms of matter that are
just as intelligent as our people on the earth. So to have the idea that
all of this was made for man gives man a great deal of what Weber and Field
used to call "Proud flesh."
Man can't get conceited from what he knows today, and he can't get it
from what intellectual people ever knew. You remember, in those days the
firmament was put in to divide the water below from the water above. They
didn't know exactly what it was made of, but they knew what it was. Heaven
was up above the firmament. They knew what it was, because Jacob had seen
the angels going up and down on a ladder. Of course, a ladder was the only
transportation for such purposes known to Jacob. If he had been dreaming
now, they would have been going up in a flying machine and coming down
in the same way.
Our conceptions of things root back; and that, of course, is the reason
for our crude religions, our crude laws, our crude ideas, and our exalted
opinion of the human race.
Omar had it nearer right. He didn't much overestimate the human race.
He knew it for what it was, and that wasn't much. He knew about what its
power was; he didn't expect much from the human race. He didn't condemn
men, because he knew he couldn't do any better. As he puts it.
Compare that conception with Mr. Henley's, with his glorious boast that
he is the captain of his soul and the master of his fate. Anyone who didn't
catch that idea from the ordinary thought of the community, but carved
it out for himself, would be a subject for psychopathic analysis and examination.
When you have an idea that everybody else has, of course you are not crazy,
but if you have silly ideas that nobody else has, of course you are crazy.
That is the only way to settle it,
Most people believe every day many things for which others are sent
to the insane asylum. The insane asylums are full of religious exaltants
who have just varied a little bit from the standard of foolishness. It
isn't the foolishness that places them in the bug-house, it is the slight
variations from the other fellows' foolishness -- that is all. If a man
says he is living with the spirits today, he is insane. If he says that
Jacob did, he is all right. That is the only difference.
Omar says we are simply "impotent pieces in the game He plays"
-- of course, he uses a capital letter when he spells, He which is all
right enough for the purpose -- "in the game He plays upon this chequer-board
of nights and days." And that is what man is. If one could vision
somebody playing a game with human pawns, one would think that everyone
who is moved around here and there was moved simply at the will of a player
and he had nothing whatever to do with the game, any more than any other
pawn. And he has nothing more to do with it than any other pawn.
Omar expresses this opinion over and over again. He doesn't blame man;
he knows the weakness of man. He knew the cruelty of judging him.
Whatever the impulse calls one to do, whatever the baubles or the baits
that set in motion many acts, however quickly or emotionally, the consequences
of the acts, as far as he is concerned, never end. All your piety and all
your wit cannot wipe out a word of it! Omar pities man; he doesn't exalt
God, but he pities man. He sees what man can do; and, more important still,
he sees what he cannot do. He condemns the idea that God could or should
judge man. The injustice of it, the foolishness of it all, appeals to him
and he puts it in this way:
Nothing ever braver and stronger and truer than that! Preachers have
wasted their time and their strength and such intelligence and learning
as they can command, talking about God forgiving man, as if it was possible
for man to hurt God, as if there was anything to be forgiven from man's
standpoint. They pray that man be forgiven and urge that man should be
forgiven. Nobody knows for what, but still it has been their constant theme.
Poets have done it; Omar knew better. Brave and strong and clear and far-seeing,
although living and dying eight hundred years ago. This is what he says
about forgiveness:
"Man's forgiveness give -- and take!" If man could afford
to forgive God, He ought to be willing to forgive man. Omar knew it. "Ev'n
with paradise devised the snake." Taking the orthodox theory, for
all the sin with which the earth is blackened, "Man's forgiveness
give -- and take!" That is courage; it is science. It is sense, and
it isn't the weak, cowardly whining of somebody who is afraid he might
be hurt unless he whines and supplicates, which he always does, simply
hoping that some great power will have compassion on him. Always cowardice
and fear, and nothing else!
Omar was wise enough to know that if there was any agency responsible
for it, that agency was responsible. He made us as we are, and as He wished
to make us, and to say that a weak, puny, ignorant human being, here today
and gone tomorrow, could possibly injure God or be responsible for his
own weakness and his ignorance, of course is a travesty upon all logic;
and of course it does great credit to all superstition, for it couldn't
come any other way.
Housman is equally sure about this. He knows about the responsibility
of man. Strange how wonderfully alike runs their philosophy! Housman condemned
nobody. No pessimist does -- only good optimists. People who believe in
a universe of law never condemn or hate individuals. Only those who enthrone
man believe in free will, and make him responsible for the terrible crudities
of Nature and the force back of it, if there is such a force. Only they
are cruel to the limit.
One can get Housman's idea of the responsibility of the human being
from his beautiful little poem, "The Culprit," the plaintive
wailing of a boy to be executed the next morning, when he, in his blindness
and terror, asked himself the question, "Why is it and what does it
all mean?" and thought about the forces that made him, and what a
blind path he traveled, as we all do. He says:
The night my father got me
His mind was not on me;
He did not plague his fancy
To muse if I should be
The son you see.
The day my mother bore me
She was a fool and glad,
For all the pain I cost her,
That she had borne the lad
That borne she had.
My mother and my father
Out of the light they lie;
The warrant would not find the m,
And here 'tis only I
Shall hang on high.
Oh let no man remember
The soul that God forgot
But fetch the county kerchief
And noose me in the knot,
And I will rot.
For so the game is ended
That should not have begun.
My father and my mother
They have a likely son,
And I have none.
Nobody lives in this world to himself or any part of himself. Nobody
fashions his body, and still less is responsible for the size or the fineness
of his brain and the sensitiveness of his nervous system. No one has anything
to do with the infinite manifestations of the human body that produce the
emotions, that force men here and there. And yet religion in its cruelty
and its brutality brands them all alike. And the religious teachers are
so conscious of their own guilt that they only seek to escape punishment
by loading their punishment onto someone else. They say that the responsibility
of the individual who in his weakness goes his way is so great and his
crimes are so large that there isn't a possibility for him to be saved
by his own works.
The law is only the slightest bit more intelligent. No matter who does
it, or what it is, the individual is responsible. If he is manifestly and
obviously crazy they may make some distinction; but no lawyer is wise enough
to look into the human mind and know what it means. The interpretations
of the human judges were delivered before we had any science on the subject
whatever, and they continue to enforce the old ideas of insanity, in spite
of the fact that there isn't an intelligent human being in the world who
has studied the question who ever thinks of it in legal terms. Judges instruct
the jury that if a man knows the difference between right and wrong he
cannot be considered insane. And yet an insane man knows the difference
better than an intelligent man, because he has not the intelligence and
the learning to know that this is one of the hardest things to determine,
and perhaps the most impossible. You can ask the inmates of any insane
asylum whether it is right to steal, lie, or kill, and they will all say
"No," just as little children will say it, because they have
been taught it. It furnishes no test, but still lawyers and Judges persist
in it, to give themselves an excuse to wreak vengeance upon unfortunate
people.
Housman knew better. He knew that in every human being is the imprint
of all that has gone before, especially the imprint of his direct ancestors.
And not only that, but that it is the imprint of all the environment in
which he has lived, and that human responsibility is utterly unscientific,
and besides that, horribly cruel.
Another thing that impressed itself upon all these poets alike was the
futility of life. I don't know whether a college succeeds in making pupils
think that they are very important in the scheme of the universe. I used
to be taught that we were all very important. Most all the boys and girls
who were taught it when I was taught it are dead, and the world is going
on just the same. I have a sort of feeling that after I am dead it will
go on just the same, and there are quite a considerable number of people
who think it will go on better. But it won't; I haven't been important
enough even to harm it. It will go on just exactly the same.
We are always told of the importance of the human being and the importance
of everything he does; the importance of his not enjoying life, because
if he is happy here of course he can't be happy hereafter, and if he is
miserable here he must be happy hereafter. Omar made short work of that,
of those promises which are not underwritten, at least not by any responsible
people. He did not believe in foregoing what little there is of life in
the hope of having a better time hereafter.
He says, "Ah, take the Cash and let the Credit go." Good advice
that: "Ah, take the Cash and let the Credit go." If you take
the "Credit," likely as not you will miss your fun both here
and hereafter. Omar knew better.
It is strange how the religious creeds have hammered that idea into
the human mind. They have always felt there was a kinship between pleasure
and sin. A smile on the face is complete evidence of wickedness. A solemn,
uninteresting countenance is a stamp of virtue and goodness, of self-denial,
that will surely be rewarded. Of course, the religious people are strangely
hedonistic without knowing it! There are some of us who think that the
goodness or badness of an act in this world can be determined only by pain
and pleasure units. The thing that brings pleasure is good, and the thing
that brings pain is bad. There is no other way to determine the difference
between good and bad. Some of us think so: I think so.
Of course, the other class roll their eyes and declaim against this
heathen philosophy, the idea that pain and pleasure have anything to do
with the worth-whileness of existence. It isn't important for you to be
happy here. But why not? You are too miserable here so you will be happy
hereafter; and the hereafter is long and the here is short. They promise
a much bigger prize than the pagan for the reward of conduct. They simply
want you to trust them. They take the pain and pleasure theory with a vengeance,
but they do business purely on credit. They are dealers in futures! I could
never understand, if it was admissible to have joy in heaven, why you couldn't
have it here, too. And if joy is admissible at all, the quicker you get
at it the better, and the surer you are of the result. Omar thought that:
"Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go!" Take the Cash and
let the other fellow have the Credit! That was his philosophy, and I insist
it is much better, and more intelligent philosophy than the other.
But Omar had no delusions about how important this human being is. He
had no delusions about the mind, about man's greatness. He knew something
about philosophy or metaphysics, whatever it is. He knew the uncertainty
of human calculations, no matter who arrived at them. He knew the round-about
way that people try to find out something, and he knew the results. He
knew the futility of all of it.
That is what Omar thought. Man evermore came out by the same door where
in he went. Therefore, "take the Cash and let the Credit go!"'
He put it even stronger than this. He knew exactly what these values were
worth, if anything. He knew what a little bit there is to the whole bag
of tricks. What's the difference whether you were born 75 years ago, or
fifty or twenty-five? what's the difference whether you are going to live
ten years, or twenty or thirty, or weather you are already dead? In that
case you escape something! This magnifying the importance of the human
being is one of the chief sins of man and results in all kinds of cruelty.
If we took the human race for what it is worth, we could not be so cruel.
Omar Khayyam knew what it was, this life, that we talk so much about:
"Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest" -- is there
anything else, if one could just make a survey of the human being, passing
across the stage of life? I suppose man has been upon the earth for over
a million years. A million years, and perhaps his generations may be thirty
to thirty-five years long. Think of the generations in a thousand years,
in 5,000 years, in a hundred thousand, in a million years! There are a
billion and a half of these important organisms on the earth at any one
time. All of them, all important -- kings, priests and professors, and
doctors and lawyers and presidents, and 100 per cent Americans, and everything
on earth you could think of -- Ku Kluxers, W.C.T.U.'s, Knights of Columbus
and Masons, everything. All of them important in this scheme of things!
All of them seeking to attract attention to themselves, and not even satisfied
when they get it!
What is it all about? it is strange what little things will interest
the human mind -- baseball games, fluctuations of the stock market, revivals,
foot races, hangings, Anything will interest them. And the wonderful importance
of the human being!
Housman knew the importance just as well as Omar. He has something to
say about it, too. He knew it was just practically nothing. Strangely like
him! The little affairs of life, the little foolishnesses of life, the
things that consume our lives without any result whatever; he knew them
and knew what they were worth. He knew they were worth practically nothing.
But we do them; the urge of living keeps us doing them, even when we know
how useless and foolish they are. Housman understood them:
Yonder see the morning blink:
The sun is up, and up must I.
To wash and dress and eat and drink
And look at things and talk and think
And work, and God knows why.
Oh often have I washed and dressed
And what's to show for all my pain?
Let me lie abed and rest:
Ten thousand times I've done my best
And all's to do again.
That is what life is, rising in the morning and washing and dressing
and going to recitations and studying and forgetting it, and then going
to bed at night, to get up the next morning and wash and dress and go to
recitation, and so on, world without end.
One might get a focus on it from the flies. They are very busy buzzing
round. You don't exactly know what they are saying, because we can't understand
fly language. Professors can't teach you fly language! We can't tell what
they are saying, but they are probably talking about the importance of
being good, about what's going to happen to their souls and, when. And
when they are stiff in the morning in the Autumn and can hardly move round,
the housewife gets up and builds the fire, and the heat limbers them up.
She sets out the bread and butter on the table. The flies come down and
get into it, and they think the housewife is working for them. Why not?
Is there any difference? Only in the length of the agony. What other?
Apparently they have a good time while the sun is shining, and apparently
they die when they get cold. It is a proposition of life and death, forms
of matter clothed with what seems to be consciousness, and then going back
again into inert matter, and that is all. There isn't any manifestation
that we humans make that we do not see in flies and in other forms of matter.
Housman understands it; they have all understood it. Read any of the
great authors of the world -- any of them; their hopes and their fears
and their queries and their doubt, are, about the same. There is only one
man I know of that can answer everything, and that is Dr Cadman.
Housman saw it. He knew a little of the difference between age and youth
-- and there is some. The trouble is, the old men always write the books;
they write them not in the way they felt when they were young, but in the
way they feel now. And they preach to the young, and condemn them for doing
what they themselves did when they had the emotion to do it. Great teachers,
when they grow old! Perhaps it is partly envy and the desire that no one
shall have anything they can't have. Likely it is, but they don't know
it. Housman says something about this:
When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse hid I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.
Now times are altered: if I care
To bay a thing I can;
The pence are here and here's the fair,
But where's the lost young man?
The world is somewhat different. The lost young man was once looking
at the fair. He couldn't go in, and he liked it more for that; but now
he is tired of the fair and tired of the baubles that once amused him and
the riddles he once tried to guess, and he can't understand that the young
man still likes to go to the fair.
We hear a great deal said by the ignorant about the wickedness of the
youth of today. Well, I don't know: some of us were wicked when we were
young. I don't know what is the matter with the youth of today having their
fling. I don't know that they are any wickeder today. First, I don't know
what the word wicked moans. Oh, I do know what it means: It means unconventional
conduct. But I don't know whether unconventional conduct is wicked in the
sense they mean it is wicked, or whether conventional conduct is good in
the sense they mean it is good. Nobody else knows!
But I remember when I was a boy -- it was a long time ago -- I used
to hear my mother complain. My mother would have been pretty nearly 125
years old if she had kept on living, but luckily for her she didn't! I
used to hear her complain of how much worse the girls were that she knew
than the girls were when she was a girl. Of course, she didn't furnish
any bill of particulars; she didn't specify, except not hanging up their
clothes, and gadding, and things like that. But at any rate, they were
worse. And my father used to tell about it, and I have an idea that Adam
and Eve used to talk the same fool way.
The truth is, the world doesn't change, or the generations of men or
the human emotions. But the individual changes as he grows old. You hear
about the Revolt of Youth. Some people are pleased at it and some displeased.
Some see fine reasons for hope in what they call the youth movement. They
can put it over on the old people, but not on the youth! There is a Revolt
of Youth.
Well, youth has always been in revolt. The greatest trouble with youth
is that it gets old. Age changes it. It doesn't bring wisdom, though most
old people think because they are old they have wisdom. But you can't get
wisdom by simply growing old. You can even forget it that way! Age means
that the blood runs slow, that the emotions are not as strong, that you
play safer, that you stay closer to the hearth. You don't try to find new
continents or even explore old ones. You don't travel into unbeaten wilderness
and lay out new roads. You stick to the old roads when you go out at all.
The world can't go on with old people. It takes young ones that are
daring, with courage and faith.
The difference between youth and old age is the same in every generation.
The viewpoint is in growing old, that is all. But the old never seem wise
enough to know it, and forever the old have been preaching to the young.
Luckily, however, the young pay very little attention to it. They sometimes
pretend to, but they never do pay much attention to it. Otherwise, life
could not exist.
Both of these poets saw the futility of life: the little things of which
it is made, scarcely worth the while. It is all right to talk about futility.
We all know it, if we know much of anything. We know life is futile. A
man who considers that his life is of very wonderful importance is awfully
close to a padded cell. Let anybody study the ordinary, everyday details
of life; see how closely he is bound and fettered; see how little it all
amounts to.
There are a billion and a half people in the world, all of them trying
to shout loud enough to be heard all at once, so as to attract the attention
of the public, so they may be happy. A billion and a half of them, and
if they all attracted attention none of them would have attention! Of course,
attention is only valuable if the particular individual attracts it and
nobody, else can get it. That is what makes presidents and kings -- they
get it and nobody else.
Then when you consider that it is all made up of little things, what
is life all about, anyway? We do keep on living. It is easy enough to demonstrate
to people who think that life is not worth while. We could do it easier
if we could only settle what worth while means. But if we settle it and
convince ourselves that it is not worth while, we still keep on living.
life does not come from willing; rather it does not come from thought and
reason. I don't live because I think it is worth while; I live because
I am a going concern, and every going concern tries to keep on going, I
don't care whether it is a tree, or a plant, or what we call a lower animal,
or man, or the Socialist party. Anything that is going tries to go on by
its own momentum, and it does just keep on going -- it is what Schopenhauer
called the 'will to live.' So we must assume that we will live anyhow as
long as we can. When the machine runs down we don't have to worry about
it any longer.
Hotisman asked himself this question, and Omar asked himself this question.
Life is of little value. What are we going to do while we live? In other
words, what is the purpose, if we can use the word purpose in this way,
which is an incorrect way? What purpose are we going to put into it? Why
should we live; and if we must live, then what? Omar tells us what. He
knew there was just one thing important; he knew what most thinkers know
today. He put it differently -- he and FitzGerald together. It is a balance
between painful and pleasurable emotions. Every organized being looks for
pleasurable emotions and tries to avoid painful ones. The seed planted
in the ground seeks the light. The instinct of everything is to move away
from pain and toward pleasure. Human beings are just like all the rest.
The earth and all its manifestations are simply that. Omar figured it out,
and after philosophizing and finding that he ever came out the same door
where in he went, he said:
You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
That is one way of forgetting life -- one way of seeking pleasurable
emotions: "I took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse." A way
that has been fairly popular down through the ages! Even in spite of the
worst that all the fanatics could possibly do, it has been a fairly universal
remedy for the ills of man. It would be perfect If it were not for the
day after!
He says in his wild exuberance:
There isn't much of it; but while it is fluttering, help it. It has
but a little way to flutter, and it is on the wing!
To those who are not quite so strenuous, there is an appeal more to
beauty, a somewhat more permanent although not much more, but a more beautiful
conception of pleasure, which is all he could get:
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise now!
Well, if you get the right jug and the right book and the rest of the
paraphernalia, it isn't so bad!
It is strange that two so different human beings have sought about the
same thing. This physical emotional life that we hear so much about is
the only life we know anything about. They sought their exaltation there,
and Omar Khayyam pictured it very well. Housman again does as well. What
does he say about the way to spend life and about life?
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore, years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
What else is there? So while the light is still on and while I can still
go, and when the cherry is in bloom -- I will go to see the cherries hung
with snow.
That is the whole philosophy of life for those who think; that is all
there is to it, and it is what everybody is trying to do, without fully
realizing it. Many are taking the Credit and letting the Cash go. Housman
is right about that.
That is why I have so little patience with the old preaching to the
young. If youth, with its quick-flowing blood, its strong imagination,
its virile feeling; if youth, with its dreams and its hopes and ambitions,
can go about the woodland to see the cherry hung with snow, why not? Who
are the croakers, who have run their race and lived their time, who are
they to keep back expression and hope and youth and joy from a world that
is almost barren at the best?
It has been youth that has kept the world alive; it will be, because
from the others emotion has fled; and with the fleeing of emotion, through
the ossification of the brain, all there is left for them to do is to preach.
I hope they have a good time doing that, and I am so glad the young pay
no attention to it!
Of course, Housman and Omar and the rest of us are called pessimist's.
It is a horrible name. What is a pessimist, anyway? It is a man or a woman
who looks at life as life is. If you could, you might take your choice,
perhaps, as to being a pessimist or a pipe dreamer. But you can't have
it, because you look at the world according to the way you are made. Those
are the two extremes. The pessimist takes life for what life is: not all
sorrow, not all pain, not all beauty, not all good. Life is not black;
life is not orange, red, or green, or all the colors of the rainbow. Life
is no one shade or hue.
It is well enough to understand it. If pessimism could come as the result
of thought, I would think a pessimist was a wise man. What is an optimist,
anyway? He reminds "Me of a little boy running through the woods and
looking up at the sky and not paying any attention to the brambles or thorns
he is scrambling through. There is a stone in front of him and he trips
over the stone. Browning said, "God's in his heaven and all's right
with the world." Others say, "God is love, love is God,"
and so on. A man who thinks that is bound to be an optimist. He believes
that things are good.
The pessimist doesn't necessarily think that everything is bad, but
he looks for the worst. He knows it will come sooner or later. When an
optimist falls, he falls a long way; when a pessimist falls it is a very
short fall. When an optimist is disappointed he is very, very sad, because
he believed it was the best of all possible worlds, and God's in his heaven
and all's well with the world. When a pessimist is disappointed he is happy,
for he wasn't looking for anything.
This is the safest and by all odds it is the wisest outlook. Housman
has put it in a little poem. It is about the last thing I shall give you.
Housman is the only man I know of who has written a poem about pessimism.
Nearly all the people who are talking about pessimism talk in prose; it
is very prosy. Poems are generally written about optimism:
Those are the sort of poems. Of course there have been poems written
about pessimism. Poetry is really, to my way of thinking, good only if
it is beauty and if it is music.
I don't mean tonight to discuss the question of free verse and poetry,
or the comparative merits of the two styles, or of prose, but I do think
that poetry is an exaltation and that you can't hold it for long. Poetry
ought to have beauty and it ought to have music. It should have both. You
can be the poet of sadness; sadness lends itself to poetry as much as gladness,
although few poets know how to use it. Listen to this from Housman:
With rue my heart is laden;
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leading
The lightfoot boys are laid,
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where raises fade.
That is sad, isn't it? But it is beautiful.
I remember once, years and years ago, reading Olive Schreiner's Story
of an African farm, in which she describes the simple Boers of South Africa,
with their sorrows and their pleasures. She used this expression: which
it took me some time to understand, in describing pain and pleasure: "There
is a depth of emotion so broad and deep that pain and pleasure are the
same." They are the same, and I think they find their meeting in beauty.
The beauty, even if it is painful, is still beauty. You find the meeting
of pain and pleasure, and you can hardly distinguish between the two emotions.
Housman knew it; he knew how to do it. Here is his idea of the young
lad who dies: not passes on -- passes off. He dies:
Now hollow fires burn out to black
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.
Oh never fear man, nought's to dread,
Look not left or right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.
Does it bring you painful or pleasurable emotions? It is beautiful;
it is profound; it is deep. To me the painful and pleasurable are blended
in the beauty, and I think the two may be one.
Housman, as I have said, is the only one I know who wrote a poem of
pessimism; and this, like all of his, is very short, and I will read it.
Somebody else may have written one; but Housman carries the philosophy
of pessimism into poetry, perhaps the philosophy that I have given you.
This poem is supposed to be introduced by somebody who complains of Housman's
dark, almost tragical verses. For in every line that he ever wrote there
is no let down. He is like Hardy; he never hauled down the flag. Life to
him was what he saw; what the world saw meant nothing. This was the view
in all of Housman's work. In all of his work there is not one false note;
and when I say a false note I mean one that is not in tune with the rest.
This is his idea of pessimism in poetry:
"Terence this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near.
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet.
And nothing now, remained to do
But begin the game anew.
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure.
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul" is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.
"Luck's a chance but trouble's sure." The moral of it is to
"train for ill and not for good."
If I had my choice, I would not like to be an optimist, even assuming
that people did not know that I was an idiot. I wouldn't want to be an
optimist because when I fell I would fall such a terribly long way. The
wise man trains for ill and not for good. He is sure he will need that
training, and the other will take care of itself as it comes along.
Of course, life is not all pleasant: it is filled with tragedy. Housman
has told us of it, and Omar Khayyam tells us of it. No man and no woman
can live and forget death. However much they try. it is there, and it probably
should be faced like anything else. Measured time is very short. Life,
amongst other things, is full of futility.
Omar Khayyam understood, and Housman understood. There are other poets
that have felt the same way. Omar Khayyam looked on the shortness of life
and understood it. He pictured himself as here for a brief moment. He loved
his friends; he loved companionship; he loved wine. I don't know how much
of it he drank. He talked about it a lot. It might have symbolized more
than it really meant to him. It has been a solace, all down through the
ages. Not only that, but it has been the symbol of other things that mean
as much -- the wine of life, the joy of living.
