SET C avail.
Many years more he lived facing the curve
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to
ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a
mountain, whence the stone would fall back of
its own weight. They had thought with some
reason that there is no more dreadful punishment
than futile and hopeless labor.
If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest
and most prudent of mortals. According to
another tradition, however, he was disposed to
practice the profession of highwayman. I see no
contradiction in this. Opinions differ as to the
reasons why he became the futile laborer of the
underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a
certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their
secrets. Egina, the daughter of Esopus, was
carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by
that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus.
He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell
about it on condition that Esopus would give
water to the citadel of Corinth. To the celestial
thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of
water. He was punished for this in the
underworld. Homer tells us also that Sisyphus
had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure
the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He
dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death
from the hands of her conqueror.
It is said that Sisyphus, being near to death,
rashly wanted to test his wife's love. He ordered
her to cast his unburied body into the middle of
the public square. Sisyphus woke up in the
underworld. And there, annoyed by an
obedience so contrary to human love, he
obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth
in order to chastise his wife. But when he had
seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water
and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer
wanted to go back to the infernal darkness.
Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no
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of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of
earth. A decree of the gods was necessary.
Mercury came and seized the impudent man by
the collar and, snatching him from his joys, lead
him forcibly back to the underworld, where his
rock was ready for him.
You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the
absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions
as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his
hatred of death, and his passion for life won him
that unspeakable penalty in which the whole
being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.
This is the price that must be paid for the
passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about
Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for
the imagination to breathe life into them. As for
this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a
body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it,
and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one
sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against
the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered
mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with
arms outstretched, the wholly human security of
two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his
long effort measured by sky less space and time
without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then
Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few
moments toward lower world whence he will
have to push it up again toward the summit. He
goes back down to the plain.
It is during that return that pause, that Sisyphus
interests me. A face that toils so close to stones
is already stone itself! I see that man going back
down with a heavy yet measured step toward the
torment of which he will never know the end.
That hour like a breathing-space which returns
as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of
consciousness. At each of those moments when
he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward
the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He
is stronger than his rock.
If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is
conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed,
if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld
him? The workman of today works every day in
his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less
absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments
when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus,
proletarian of the gods, powerless and
rebellious, knows the whole extent of his
wretched condition: it is what he thinks of
during his descent. The lucidity that was to
constitute his torture at the same time crowns his
victory. There is no fate that cannot be
surmounted by scorn.
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in
sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word
is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus
returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in
the beginning. When the images of earth cling
too tightly to memory, when the call of
happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that
melancholy arises in man's heart: this is the
rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The
boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are
our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths
perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Edipus
at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But
from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins.
Yet at the same moment, blind and desperate, he
realizes that the only bond linking him to the
world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a
tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many
ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my
soul make me conclude that all is well."
Sophocles' Edipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov,
thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory.
Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.
One does not discover the absurd without being
tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What!-
--by such narrow ways--?" There is but one
world, however. Happiness and the absurd are
two sons of the same earth. They are
inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that
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happiness necessarily springs from the absurd.
Discovery. It happens as well that the felling of
the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude
that all is well," says Edipus, and that remark is
sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe
of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been,
exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who
had come into it with dissatisfaction and a
preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a
human matter, which must be settled among
men.
All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His
fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing.
Likewise, the absurd man, when he
contemplates his torment, silences all the idols.
In the universe suddenly restored to its silence,
the myriad wondering little voices of the earth
rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations
from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse
and price of victory. There is no sun without
shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
The absurd man says yes and his efforts will
henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal
fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there
is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and
despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be
the master of his days. At that subtle moment
when man glances backward over his life,
Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight
pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated
actions which become his fate, created by him,
combined under his memory's eye and soon
sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the
wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind
man eager to see who knows that the night has
no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still
rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain!
One always finds one's burden again. But
Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates
the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that
all is well. This universe henceforth without a
master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.
Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of
that night filled mountain, in itself forms a
world. The struggle itself toward the heights is
enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine
Sisyphus happy.
Running Shoes by Rick Barret
I am a man who, having failed at
business, marriage, and fatherhood, lives in a
mobile home with myself and my second and
final wife, my Helen. She will stay, i know,
because of time and because of Todd, my son,
who is gone. I am clumsy with speech. Spoken
words make me nervous, cautious. People
expect them to make sense, to carry truth. When
i speak i am startled by the chasm between what
i think and the words that fumble from me.
I see now that Todd became a man at 18 as
i had, when he ran away from home. We were
behind the house, laying up a cord of wood for
the winter, something we did every August in
the high heat of summer. There was, he had told
me, an art school in New York that would take
him, ''That,'' I told him, ''I cannot support. Paint
if you want. A hobby or something. In your
spare time. But first do something to support
yourself.''
I could not know then that his work would
be considered brilliant in circles, that he would
make money, that he would paint only at night
and only when he was high, that his work would
show in galleries. Now, whenever I see
something of his work, the only sense it makes
to me is that it makes no sense at all.
He didn't come home again until he was 28.
Ten round years. I had lost my business, my
house, Todd's mother to divorce, a lung to
cancer, the habit of liquor. Helen was my nurse
when i lost the lung, sturdy and firm, and intent
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on finding someone to fix. That was enough to
make me love here then and still.
Todd stood at the door, the ten years and
more between us, the red heat in his face from
having run five miles. He did not look like a son
i would have. His hair was wild, big, a tumble of
brown corkscrews reaching his shoulders. He
had driven here - 2,000 miles - following a
message i had left on his phone machine, '' I
guess it's been ten years, i have a new wife. This
is your father. Not new anymore. Maybe you
would think about coming for Christmas.''
He would know the smallness of my life,
how petty my past, that the greatest i had done
was fail at being his father. What i would know
later was that he was gay and had been sick.
Todd sat in Helen's chair, his legs crossed,
one foot kicking at the air. Todd pulled a
bandanna from his hair and wipe at the sweat on
his forehead. After watching movies together, he
went out and i followed him. ''I was sick last
year, dad,'' he said. ''And, you're telling me
you're gay, aren't you?.''''That isn't really the
point,'' he said. ''It is a point.'' I pressed my
fingers against my thighs, down toward my
knees, grabbing them. ''Are you sick now?''
''It never goes away, all the way. I had
pneumonia. I was in the hospital. I got better.
This time I’m back to running a little, ''he said. I
asked him if his alone in New York, Manhattan,
he whispered, ''Yes, but i have friends, but I
have no Helen.'' I asked him, ''What about
Nick?''
And he said, ''He died. He was always only a
friend. Not only a friend-my only bestfriend
since i was seven.'' I thought of having no Helen,
and began to know that Todd feared this
aloneness more than this sickness. This tide
rising inside him.
By the time Todd turned nine, I slapped him
hard and once across the face, when I saw his
room painted with his feelings to Nick. His
obviously turning to a girl's heart. Todd stared
into my eyes, his tears defiant and silent.
When I woke up the next morning Helen had
already gone, and the notion of filling up a day
for and with Todd frightened me.
In the three days before Christmas, I bought him
books on running, running shorts, shirts, a
journal. I bought him a book of runners' recipes.
Running became the one thing I knew about him
that was so safe to ask, a thing for which doing
homework brought no fear.
I see now that our zeal for his running, both his
and mine, was also about fear. I feared Todd
would stop running because he could run no
longer, because he had fallen sick again, too sick
to run. And Todd, I imagine, feared the same. I
thought that to engage him in his running, to
encourage him in it, might perpetuate the
running, him.
I would be able to divine, perhaps because I am
his father - no matter that I was inept or absent
much of his life - Todd's reaction to my gift the
moment the lid came off the box. Todd simply
stared at the shoes, his face naked from
discovery, his eyes pooling and blinking, and
slowly plucked away the tissue paper.
The looming regret I have about life is that there
are stationary fronts, banks of cloud between
fathers and sons, between men, between a man
and himself. Because of this I had no idea how
to touch him then, he in his new shoes, I sitting,
staring lamely at a gift I can't recall. Now that he
is gone, I have no idea how to bear having failed
at this, the knowledge of how to stand and hold
on to my one son.
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A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
Part I: WHEN Miss Emily Grierson
died, our whole town went to her funeral: the
men through a sort of respectful affection for a
fallen monument, the women mostly out of
curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no
one save an old man-servant--a combined
gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten
years.
It was a big, squarish frame house that had once
been white, decorated with cupolas and spires
and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome
style of the seventies, set on what had once been
our most select street. But garages and cotton
gins had encroached and obliterated even the
august names of that neighborhood; only Miss
Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and
coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and
the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores.
And now Miss Emily had gone to join the
representatives of those august names where
they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among
the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and
Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of
Jefferson.
Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty,
and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon
the town, dating from that day in 1894 when
Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the
edict that no Negro woman should appear on the
streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the
dispensation dating from the death of her father
on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would
have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented
an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's
father had loaned money to the town, which the
town, as a matter of business, preferred this way
of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris'
generation and thought could have invented it,
and only a woman could have believed it.
When the next generation, with its more modern
ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this
arrangement created some little dissatisfaction.
On the first of the year they mailed her a tax
notice. February came, and there was no reply.
They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call
at the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week
later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to
call or to send his car for her, and received in
reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a
thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the
effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax
notice was also enclosed, without comment.
They called a special meeting of the Board of
Aldermen. A deputation waited upon her,
knocked at the door through which no visitor
had passed since she ceased giving china-
painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They
were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall
from which a stairway mounted into still more
shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close,
dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor.
It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered
furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of
one window, they could see that the leather was
cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust
rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with
slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tarnished
gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon
portrait of Miss Emily's father.
They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman
in black, with a thin gold chain descending to
her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on
an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her
skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was
why what would have been merely plumpness in
another was obesity in her. She looked bloated,
like a body long submerged in motionless water,
and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty
ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces
of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they
moved from one face to another while the
visitors stated their errand.
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She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the
door and listened quietly until the spokesman
came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear
the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold
chain.
Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in
Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me.
Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city
records and satisfy yourselves."
"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss
Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff,
signed by him?"
"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said.
"Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I
have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But there is nothing on the books to show that,
you see We must go by the--"
"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in
Jefferson."
"But, Miss Emily--"
"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had
been dead almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in
Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show
these gentlemen out."
Part II: So SHE vanquished them, horse
and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers
thirty years before about the smell.
That was two years after her father's death and a
short time after her sweetheart--the one we
believed would marry her --had deserted her.
After her father's death she went out very little;
after her sweetheart went away, people hardly
saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the
temerity to call, but were not received, and the
only sign of life about the place was the Negro
man--a young man then--going in and out with a
market basket.
"Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen
properly, "the ladies said; so they were not
surprised when the smell developed. It was
another link between the gross, teeming world
and the high and mighty Griersons.
A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor,
Judge Stevens, eighty years old.
"But what will you have me do about it,
madam?" he said.
"Why, send her word to stop it," the woman
said. "Isn't there a law? "
"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge
Stevens said. "It's probably just a snake or a rat
that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to
him about it."
The next day he received two more complaints,
one from a man who came in diffident
deprecation. "We really must do something
about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to
bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do
something." That night the Board of Aldermen
met--three graybeards and one younger man, a
member of the rising generation.
"It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to
have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain
time to do it in, and if she don't. .."
"Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you
accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?"
So the next night, after midnight, four men
crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the
house like burglars, sniffing along the base of
the brickwork and at the cellar openings while
one of them performed a regular sowing motion
with his hand out of a sack slung from his
shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and
sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings.
As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had
been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it,
the light behind her, and her upright torso
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motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly
across the lawn and into the shadow of the
locusts that lined the street. After a week or two
the smell went away.
That was when people had begun to feel really
sorry for her. People in our town, remembering
how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone
completely crazy at last, believed that the
Griersons held themselves a little too high for
what they really were. None of the young men
were quite good enough for Miss Emily and
such. We had long thought of them as a tableau,
Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the
background, her father a spraddled silhouette in
the foreground, his back to her and clutching a
horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-
flung front door. So when she got to be thirty
and was still single, we were not pleased
exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the
family she wouldn't have turned down all of her
chances if they had really materialized.
When her father died, it got about that the house
was all that was left to her; and in a way, people
were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily.
Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become
humanized. Now she too would know the old
thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.
The day after his death all the ladies prepared to
call at the house and offer condolence and aid,
as is our custom Miss Emily met them at the
door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief
on her face. She told them that her father was
not dead. She did that for three days, with the
ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying
to persuade her to let them dispose of the body.
Just as they were about to resort to law and
force, she broke down, and they buried her
father quickly.
We did not say she was crazy then. We believed
she had to do that. We remembered all the
young men her father had driven away, and we
knew that with nothing left, she would have to
cling to that which had robbed her, as people
will.
Part III: SHE WAS SICK for a long
time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut
short, making her look like a girl, with a vague
resemblance to those angels in colored church
windows--sort of tragic and serene.
The town had just let the contracts for paving the
sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's
death they began the work. The construction
company came with niggers and mules and
machinery, and a foreman named Homer
Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a
big voice and eyes lighter than his face. The
little boys would follow in groups to hear him
cuss the niggers, and the niggers singing in time
to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew
everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of
laughing anywhere about the square, Homer
Barron would be in the center of the group.
Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily
on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-
wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays
from the livery stable.
At first we were glad that Miss Emily would
have an interest, because the ladies all said, "Of
course a Grierson would not think seriously of a
Northerner, a day laborer." But there were still
others, older people, who said that even grief
could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse
oblige- -
without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said,
"Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her."
She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her
father had fallen out with them over the estate of
old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was
no communication between the two families.
They had not even been represented at the
funeral.
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And as soon as the old people said, "Poor
Emily," the whispering began. "Do you suppose
it's really so?" they said to one another. "Of
course it is. What else could . . ." This behind
their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin
behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday
afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the
matched team passed: "Poor Emily."
She carried her head high enough--even when
we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she
demanded more than ever the recognition of her
dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted
that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her
imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat
poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after
they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while
the two female cousins were visiting her.
"I want some poison," she said to the druggist.
She was over thirty then, still a slight woman,
though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty
black eyes in a face the flesh of which was
strained across the temples and about the
eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's
face ought to look. "I want some poison," she
said.
"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and
such? I'd recom--"
"I want the best you have. I don't care what
kind."
The druggist named several. "They'll kill
anything up to an elephant. But what you want
is--"
"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good
one?"
"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want-
-"
"I want arsenic."
The druggist looked down at her. She looked
back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag.
"Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's
what you want. But the law requires you to tell
what you are going to use it for."
Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted
back in order to look him eye for eye, until he
looked away and went and got the arsenic and
wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought
her the package; the druggist didn't come back.
When she opened the package at home there was
written on the box, under the skull and bones:
"For rats."
Part IV: So THE NEXT day we all said,
"She will kill herself"; and we said it would be
the best thing. When she had first begun to be
seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will
marry him." Then we said, "She will persuade
him yet," because Homer himself had remarked-
-he liked men, and it was known that he drank
with the younger men in the Elks' Club--that he
was not a marrying man. Later we said, "Poor
Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on
Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss
Emily with her head high and Homer Barron
with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins
and whip in a yellow glove.
Then some of the ladies began to say that it was
a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the
young people. The men did not want to interfere,
but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister--
Miss Emily's people were Episcopal-- to call
upon her. He would never divulge what
happened during that interview, but he refused
to go back again. The next Sunday they again
drove about the streets, and the following day
the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's
relations in Alabama.
So she had blood-kin under her roof again and
we sat back to watch developments. At first
nothing happened. Then we were sure that they
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were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily
had been to the jeweler's and ordered a man's
toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each
piece. Two days later we learned that she had
bought a complete outfit of men's clothing,
including a nightshirt, and we said, "They are
married." We were really glad. We were glad
because the two female cousins were even more
Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.
So we were not surprised when Homer Barron--
the streets had been finished some time since--
was gone. We were a little disappointed that
there was not a public blowing-off, but we
believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss
Emily's coming, or to give her a chance to get
rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal,
and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help
circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after
another week they departed. And, as we had
expected all along, within three days Homer
Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the
Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at dusk
one evening.
And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron.
And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro
man went in and out with the market basket, but
the front door remained closed. Now and then
we would see her at a window for a moment, as
the men did that night when they sprinkled the
lime, but for almost six months she did not
appear on the streets. Then we knew that this
was to be expected too; as if that quality of her
father which had thwarted her woman's life so
many times had been too virulent and too
furious to die.
When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown
fat and her hair was turning gray. During the
next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it
attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when
it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at
seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray,
like the hair of an active man.
From that time on her front door remained
closed, save for a period of six or seven years,
when she was about forty, during which she
gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a
studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the
daughters and granddaughters of Colonel
Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with
the same regularity and in the same spirit that
they were sent to church on Sundays with a
twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate.
Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.
Then the newer generation became the backbone
and the spirit of the town, and the painting
pupils grew up and fell away and did not send
their children to her with boxes of color and
tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies'
magazines. The front door closed upon the last
one and remained closed for good. When the
town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone
refused to let them fasten the metal numbers
above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She
would not listen to them.
Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro
grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out
with the market basket. Each December we sent
her a tax notice, which would be returned by the
post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and
then we would see her in one of the downstairs
windows--she had evidently shut up the top floor
of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a
niche, looking or not looking at us, we could
never tell which. Thus she passed from
generation to generation--dear, inescapable,
impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with
dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro
man to wait on her. We did not even know she
was sick; we had long since given up trying to
get any information from the Negro.
9|Page
He talked to no one, probably not even to her,
for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if
from disuse.
She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a
heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head
propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age
and lack of sunlight.
Part V: THE NEGRO met the first of
the ladies at the front door and let them in, with
their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick,
curious glances, and then he disappeared. He
walked right through the house and out the back
and was not seen again.
The two female cousins came at once. They held
the funeral on the second day, with the town
coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of
bought flowers, with the crayon face of her
father musing profoundly above the bier and the
ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old
men --some in their brushed Confederate
uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of
Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of
theirs, believing that they had danced with her
and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its
mathematical progression, as the old do, to
whom all the past is not a diminishing road but,
instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever
quite touches, divided from them now by the
narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of
years.
Already we knew that there was one room in
that region above stairs which no one had seen
in forty years, and which would have to be
forced. They waited until Miss Emily was
decently in the ground before they opened it.
The violence of breaking down the door seemed
to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin,
acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie
everywhere upon this room decked and
furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance
curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-
shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the
delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet
things backed with tarnished silver, silver so
tarnished that the monogram was obscured.
Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had
just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the
surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair
hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the
two mute shoes and the discarded socks.
The man himself lay in the bed.
For a long while we just stood there, looking
down at the profound and fleshless grin. The
body had apparently once lain in the attitude of
an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts
love, that conquers even the grimace of love,
had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted
beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had
become inextricable from the bed in which he
lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside
him lay that even coating of the patient and
biding dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was
the indentation of a head. One of us lifted
something from it, and leaning forward, that
faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the
nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin (1894)
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was
afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was
taken to break to her as gently as possible the
news of her husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in
broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in
half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards
was there, too, near her. It was he who had been
in the newspaper office when intelligence of the
railroad disaster was received, with Brently
Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He
10 | P a g e
had only taken the time to assure himself of its
truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to
forestall any less careful, less tender friend in
bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have
heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to
accept its significance. She wept at once, with
sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.
When the storm of grief had spent itself she
went away to her room alone. She would have
no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a
comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank,
pressed down by a physical exhaustion that
haunted her body and seemed to reach into her
soul.
She could see in the open square before her
house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with
the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain
was in the air. In the street below a peddler was
crying his wares. The notes of a distant song
which some one was singing reached her faintly,
and countless sparrows were twittering in the
eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here
and there through the clouds that had met and
piled one above the other in the west facing her
window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the
cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except
when a sob came up into her throat and shook
her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep
continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose
lines bespoke repression and even a certain
strength. But now there was a dull stare in her
eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on
one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a
glance of reflection, but rather indicated a
suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was
waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did
not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name.
But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching
toward her through the sounds, the scents, the
color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She
was beginning to recognize this thing that was
approaching to possess her, and she was striving
to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her
two white slender hands would have been. When
she abandoned herself a little whispered word
escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over
and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The
vacant stare and the look of terror that had
followed it went from her eyes. They stayed
keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the
coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch
of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a
monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted
perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion
as trivial. She knew that she would weep again
when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in
death; the face that had never looked save with
love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she
saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession
of years to come that would belong to her
absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms
out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those
coming years; she would live for herself. There
would be no powerful will bending hers in that
blind persistence with which men and women
believe they have a right to impose a private will
upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a
cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime
as she looked upon it in that brief moment of
illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often
she had not. What did it matter! What could
11 | P a g e
love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face
of this possession of self-assertion which she
suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of
her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door
with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for
admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open
the door--you will make yourself ill. What are
you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the
door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she
was drinking in a very elixir of life through that
open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days
ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and
all sorts of days that would be her own. She
breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.
It was only yesterday she had thought with a
shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her
sister's importunities. There was a feverish
triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself
unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She
clasped her sister's waist, and together they
descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for
them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a
latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a
little travel-stained, composedly carrying his
grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from
the scene of the accident, and did not even know
there had been one. He stood amazed at
Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick
motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of
heart disease--of the joy that kills.
 Trees by Joyce Kilmer Patterns by Amy Lowell

I think that I shall never see I walk down the garden paths,

A poem lovely as a tree. And all the daffodils

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; I walk down the patterned garden paths

In my stiff, brocaded gown.

A tree that looks at God all day, With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray; I too am a rare

A tree that may in Summer wear Pattern. As I wander down

A nest of robins in her hair; The garden paths.

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; My dress is richly figured,

Who intimately lives with rain. And the train

Poems are made by fools like me, Makes a pink and silver stain

But only God can make a tree. On the gravel, and the thrift

Of the borders.

I'm Nobody! Who are you? (260) by Emily Just a plate of current fashion,
Dickinson, 1830 - 1886
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Are you – Nobody – too?
Only whale-bone and brocade.
Then there's a pair of us!
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
Of a lime tree. For my passion

Wars against the stiff brocade.

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
The daffodils and squills
How public – like a Frog –
Flutter in the breeze
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
As they please.
To an admiring Bog!

12 | P a g e
And I weep;
For the lime tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my
bosom.
And the splashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble
basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the
ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the
ground.
I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the
paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
13 | P a g e
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt
and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-
booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my
body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the
sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.
Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider
from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord
Hartwell
Died in action Thursday sen’night.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” l told him. The patterned garden paths

“See that the messenger takes some refreshment. In my stiff, brocaded gown.

No, no answer.” The squills and daffodils

And I walked into the garden, Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters,
and to snow.
Up and down the patterned paths,
I shall go
In my stiff, correct brocade.
Up and down,
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in
the sun, In my gown.

Each one. Gorgeously arrayed,

I stood upright too, Boned and stayed.

Held rigid to the pattern And the softness of my body will be guarded
from embrace
By the stiffness of my gown.
By each button, hook, and lace.
Up and down I walked,
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Up and down.
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,

In a pattern called a war.

In a month he would have been my husband.
Christ! What are patterns for?
In a month, here, underneath this lime,

We would have broke the pattern;

Fable by Ralph Waldo Emerson
He for me, and I for him,
1803 - 1882
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
The mountain and the squirrel
On this shady seat.
Had a quarrel;
He had a whim
And the former called the latter ‘Little Prig.’
That sunlight carried blessing.
Bun replied,
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
‘You are doubtless very big;
Now he is dead.
But all sorts of things and weather
In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Must be taken in together,
Up and down

14 | P a g e
To make up a year sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
And a sphere. and may you visit many Egyptian cities
And I think it no disgrace to gather stores of knowledge from their
scholars.
To occupy my place.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
If I’m not so large as you, Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
You are not so small as I,
Better if it lasts for years,
And not half so spry. so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
I’ll not deny you make not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
A very pretty squirrel track;
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have
Neither can you crack a nut.’
fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of
experience, you will have understood by then
Ithaka by Constantine Ravafy what these Ithakas mean.

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery. Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way as Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as
long as a rare excitement Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
stirs your spirit and your body.
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when, What men or gods are these? What maidens
with what pleasure, what joy, loth?
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

15 | P a g e
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not
leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not
grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
16 | P a g e
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Do not go gentle into that good night by
Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is
right,
Because their words had forked no lightning
they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green
bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding
sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I
pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Educating the Literary Taste by Paz
Latorena
It was a Spanish thinker and moralist,
Baltazar Gracian, who first used and popularized
the term, hombre de buen gusto, during the
seventeenth century, although by it, he simply
meant a tactful person. The adoption of the term
in the aesthetic field took place in France,
according to literary history, and La Biuyere
affirms that during his time discussions centered
on good taste and bad taste until the term grew
into wide use, and, by the beginning of the
following century had established itself in
Europe.
Certainly Addison, in one of his essays
published in the Spectator, defined literary taste
as the discernment and appreciation of that
which is fundamentally excellent in literature in
another essay, he defined it as a faculty which
discerns the beauties of literature with pleasure
and its imperfections with dislike. These two
definitions, according to Coleridge, make of
literary taste a rational activity but with a
distinctively subjective bias.
17 | P a g e
It remained for Ruskin, however to make the
distinction, between literary raste and literary
criticism with which it is being continuously
confounded. He said that literary criticism is a
formal action of the intellect, a deliberate search
for perfections and imperfections by the
application of universally accepted standards to
a literary composition; on the other hand, taste is
the instant, almost instinctive preferring of one
literature to another, apparently for no other
reason except that the first is more proper to
human nature. To have literary taste, therefore,
from the foregoing definition and distinctions, is
to have a feeling and an inclination for what is
fine and beautiful in literature, to savor and to
appreciate it, and to dislike and reject what is
vulgar and tawdry in it.
There comes a time in the life of every man
when he discovers for himself or is led to
discover the wide and varied world of literature,
a world ass wide and varied as the life from
which it draws its sustenance. It is a world of
prose and poetry in which the interplay of
human passions, the greatness and the misery of
man, his heroism and his wickedness, his
strength and his weakness, are portrayed with
relentless analysis by those whose minds have
probed human life to its deepest and most
hidden springs of action. When he finds himself
in that world, and eventually he will, man will
stand in need of good literary taste. For unless
he knows how to discriminate, how to separate
truth from falsehood, good from bad, the
specious from the true, the meretricious from the
sincere; unless he knows how not to take the
truth of the portrayal for the truth of the thing
portrayed, unless he is convinced that aptness of
expression and brilliance of diction do not turn
falsehood into truth, his sense of literary values
runs the risk of being falsified.
Fortunately, according to Sir Joshua Reynolds,
taste can be taught. It can be acquired by
determined intercourse with good models. And it
is one of the more important functions of
educations; that is, to train the student, the
seeker of light, to distinguish between pleasures
that are becoming to a man and pleasures that
are unbecoming to him, to find delight in what
ought to delight him, and to feel repulsion for
what ought to repel him, especially in the field
of literature.
The popularity of literature courses in high
school and college augurs well for the
development of a sound, wholesome, literary
taste. A great deal of the works and the
responsibility falls on the teacher whose attitude
towards the teaching of literature should be, that
the interpretation and the appreciation of the
individual authors and their works are important
nor so much in themselves, but as means to the
refinement of a taste that will make of literature,
when school days are over, a source of pure
pleasure and spiritual adventure for the student.
What literary ideals, then, should the teacher
emphasize? What literary standards should guide
him in the selection of the literature, intercourse
with which would develop good literary taste? In
other words, what literary values make the
literature that can serve that end?
First, there is the intellectual value of literature.
By intellectual value we mean something in a
literary composition which makes the reader
think to some purpose so that his mental life is
enriched and enlarged as a result.
The other arts do not place great emphasis on
intellectual value, Music, painting, sculpture, the
dance — all these appeal primarily through the
sense and they convey beauty through ear and
eye. The sound and sight in themselves enrich
the senses. Yet all arts have some intellectual
appeal. How much more must literature,
appealing through the physical or the mind’s eye
to the mind itself and setting up a train of ideas,
consider intellectual content important?
This does not mean, however, that all literature
must present a profound truth, solve a pressing
intellectual problem, make its readers think a
long and deeply. In intellectual value, as in other
18 | P a g e
matters, there are degrees. We would be very
reluctant to condemn a charming romance by
Stevenson, a sparkling comedy of the Quinter
brothers, the delightful society versus of the
French, even the glamorous poetry of Swinburne
from all of which we have had so much and so
many kinds of pleasure even though the
intellectual value be slight.
But all great literature, that of universal and
enduring appeal, will, upon close scrutiny, be
found to contain a high degree of intellectual
value. No play of Shakespeare or Calderon de la
Barca, no perm of Dante or Milton, no novel of
Tolstol or Hardy is without the quality that
appeals to the human mind and enlarges it.
And the high quality that appeals to the human
mind and enlarges it is truth; better still the truth
as presented by literature. Not the truth that is
mere information or that is factual, but the truth
that imagination and art transmute from merely
dry bines put together into breath and life. Not
the truth supplied by romanticism alone, or
realism, or idealism or naturalism, but a truth
that does not depend on such methods but on
something more fundamental. The romantic may
be as true as the realistic; the idealist may look
at life as truly as naturalist. The point is that
human life and human experience which is the
stuff of literature os a complex thing; It is
neither wholly material nor wholly spiritual; it is
neither completely ascribed by the details of
physical existence nor entirely given to dream. It
is compounded experience, invariably the more
sordid side – and this is our first brief against
much of the literature of our own days –
contains only part of the truth and falsifies
values.
From literature sans intellectual value, and
therefore not literature at all, from literature that
contains half-truths and falsified human values,
from literature that leaves the reader unsatisfied,
food taste should be trained to shrink from.
Second, there is the emotional value of literature
which is as significant as its intellectual value.
An appeal to the emotions is the distinguishing
mark of any literature worth its name. And even
the dullness of novels, the flattest of dramatic
failures, the worst poem show an endeavour to
express and to arouse emotion.
For purposed of literature, the term “emotion”
may be made largely inclusive. Under the
shadows of the two main classes, pleasant and
unpleasant emotions, there walk many
experiences that we commonly call moods,
feelings, attitudes.
Strangely enough, the so-called pleasant
emotions have had very little appeal for writers.
Fried, pathos, fear,, even horror have stirred the
creative faculty more than happiness and
serenity, from Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound to
Sheriff’s Journey’s End. And the obvious
explanation is that life is more of the material of
tragedy and of pathos and thr writer takes what
gives him most and uses it.
However, literature proves that it can take the
unpleasant and the painful from life and so
represent them that pleasure and not pain is the
resulting emotion of the reader, Otherwise
tragedy would repel and not attract. But in art,
literature in particular, there is always,
associated with the painful, even with the
horrible, something which arouses desirable
emotions. The desirable element may be closesly
associated with the painful stimulus itself or it
may be in the effect which the painful stimulus
have upon the reader. The figure of a weak man
might be contemptible, but in arouses pity. An
act of cruelty and injustice may give painful
emotions to the reader and at the same time stir
moral indignation which in itself is healthy, the
war poems of Siegfried Sasson would be almost
unbearable because of the horrors they depict
were it not for the suggestions of heroism and
sacrifice and for the hope they carry, the
eventual abolition of war. Here are emotions
growing out of and involved without contempt
but they satisfy, enlarge, and ennoble. So in
larger scenes of horror, tragedy or pathos, our
19 | P a g e
pleasure in the nobility that withstands pain and
evil, our sympathy with suffering lift us out of
the realm of the merely unpleasant or painful.
Thus almost any emotion may be represent in
art, no matter how painful, no matter how
unpleasant, if the imagination of the writer finds
it in meanings and associations that arouse
wholesome and pleasurable feelings.
The statement that literature should appeal to the
noble and higher emotions invariably brings
forth the question of what the nobles and higher
emotions are. To which the answer is that they
are those emotions and feelings and attitudes
which are ours because we are human beings
and not animals, those emotion which control
our conduct as moral beings, those emotions that
move us to right and happy living. And those are
the emotions which a good literary taste
instinctively looks for in literature and without
which literature would have very little account
for its being.
Third, there is the ethical value of literature
which has more frequently been a storm center
than either of the other content values. Emphasis
on the ethical significance of literature has been
derided as frequently as it has been demanded.
Art of art’s sake has been a cry raised on and
off, especially in modern times, but it has been
countered by the works of great didactic writers,
from Plato to Tolstol.
It is not for us here to take sides as to which the
correct concept of the end of literature is,
didactic, that is for instruction as Plato says, or
aesthetic, that is for pleasure Aristotle holds. We
have always favoured Horace who believes in
literature that both teaches and delights. But this
we know, that literature that is immoral does not
and cannot delight man, much less instruct him.
Judgement as to what constitutes immorality in
literature varies greatly. Let us, for one, consider
the morality of expression. There are those who
believe that frankness of speech does not
consulate immorality. In fact, they hold, it is
healthier to speak frankly of the normal facts of
life than to veil in imperfectly, even maliciously. retribution.
The use of concealing phrases which probably An appeal to facts shows that all supreme
deceive nobody is often far more suggestive, far literatures have a positive ethical value. Creative
more over stimulating to the imagination that writing, emanating from and dealing with man’s
modern frankness. experience, must have some reference to his
We believe that there is a grain of truth in that conduct. And since we are men and not animals,
contention. However, when language goes since we are moral beings with a conscience,
beyond the normal express of abnormality, and good literary taste demands that in all literature
so gives the reader unhealthy information and there should be found a positive influence that
stimulates the morbid imagination, then it is will bring us higher values, both as individuals
immoral. Its aim becomes not that expressing of and as members of a social order.
truth but obscenity. The conclusion of this There are witnesses in the world today a cult of
matter of morality or immorality in expression is the formless and the ugly in the various arts of
that it is not so much a question of the words human life, but in manifests itself more strongly
that are used as the purposes for which they are and shamelessly in literature, particularly in the
used. novel and the drama. And as for the motion
Which brings us to the consideration of the picture, it fairly reeks with it. The effect on
morality of the theme. There are those who hold society and individual is distressing.
that a literary composition, the theme of which is I conclude, education must erect barriers against
immorality is not necessarily immoral. The rampant vulgarity. And good taste is not only a
history of literature, they contend, shows that barrier but a means of devulgarization; a taste
there are a few books that deals with vice and that is attuned to the fine and beautiful, a taste
crime of some sort. Were we therefore reject as out of sympathy with the false and the ignoble, a
immoral all the literature dealing with vice and taste that would be one of the instruments for
crime we would have to banish creative writing richer living.
as a whole. The Illiad, Oedipus Tyrannus,
Macbeth, Faust are not immoral books.
That we admit. But there are books that deal
with similar themes and are definitely immoral.
What makes the difference?
Obviously, the answer lies in the purpose and
aim of the writer and in his emphasis. If the aim
of the writer is to focus this attention of the
readers upon evil for evil’s own sake, his
purpose is degrading; consequently his book is
immoral.
The realist will say that the writer portraying life
should present vice as attractive. True. But the
attractiveness of vice is not the whole truth
about it. Great writers have presented vice as
attractive but they have also presented the ashes
into which that attractiveness turns, if we yield
to its lure. That is representing the whole of life,
which usually includes reaction, and later,

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