Marriage

This institution,

perhaps one should say enterprise

out of respect for which

one says one need not change one's mind

about a thing one has believed in,

requiring public promises

of one's intention

to fulfill a private obligation:

I wonder what Adam and Eve

think of it by this time,

this firegilt steel

alive with goldenness;

how bright it shows —

"of circular traditions and impostures,

committing many spoils,"

requiring all one's criminal ingenuity

to avoid!

Psychology which explains everything

explains nothing

and we are still in doubt.

Eve: beautiful woman —

I have seen her

when she was so handsome

she gave me a start,

able to write simultaneously

in three languages —

English, German and French

and talk in the meantime;

equally positive in demanding a commotion

and in stipulating quiet:

"I should like to be alone;"

to which the visitor replies,

"I should like to be alone;

why not be alone together?"

Below the incandescent stars

below the incandescent fruit,

the strange experience of beauty;

its existence is too much;

it tears one to pieces

and each fresh wave of consciousness

is poison.

"See her, see her in this common world,"

the central flaw

in that first crystal-fine experiment,

this amalgamation which can never be more

than an interesting possibility,

describing it

as "that strange paradise

unlike flesh, gold, or stately buildings,

the choicest piece of my life:

the heart rising

in its estate of peace

as a boat rises

with the rising of the water;"

constrained in speaking of the serpent —

that shed snakeskin in the history of politeness

not to be returned to again —

that invaluable accident

exonerating Adam.

And he has beauty also;

it's distressing — the O thou

to whom, from whom,

without whom nothing — Adam;

"something feline,

something colubrine" — how true!

a crouching mythological monster

in that Persian miniature of emerald mines,

raw silk — ivory white, snow white,

oyster white and six others —

that paddock full of leopards and giraffes —

long lemonyellow bodies

sown with trapezoids of blue.

Alive with words,

vibrating like a cymbal

touched before it has been struck,

he has prophesied correctly —

the industrious waterfall,

"the speedy stream

which violently bears all before it,

at one time silent as the air

and now as powerful as the wind."

"Treading chasms

on the uncertain footing of a spear,"

forgetting that there is in woman

a quality of mind

which is an instinctive manifestation

is unsafe,

he goes on speaking

in a formal, customary strain

of "past states," the present state,

seals, promises,

the evil one suffered,

the good one enjoys,

hell, heaven,

everything convenient

to promote one's joy."

There is in him a state of mind

by force of which,

perceiving what it was not

intended that he should,

"he experiences a solemn joy

in seeing that he has become an idol."

Plagued by the nightingale

in the new leaves,

with its silence —

not its silence but its silences,

he says of it:

"It clothes me with a shirt of fire."

"He dares not clap his hands

to make it go on

lest it should fly off;

if he does nothing, it will sleep;

if he cries out, it will not understand."

Unnerved by the nightingale

and dazzled by the apple,

impelled by "the illusion of a fire

effectual to extinguish fire,"

compared with which

the shining of the earth

is but deformity — a fire

"as high as deep as bright as broad

as long as life itself,"

he stumbles over marriage,

"a very trivial object indeed"

to have destroyed the attitude

in which he stood —

the ease of the philosopher

unfathered by a woman.

Unhelpful Hymen!

"a kind of overgrown cupid"

reduced to insignificance

by the mechanical advertising

parading as involuntary comment,

by that experiment of Adam's

with ways out but no way in —

the ritual of marriage,

augmenting all its lavishness;

its fiddle-head ferns,

lotus flowers, opuntias, white dromedaries,

its hippopotamus —

nose and mouth combined

in one magnificent hopper,

"the crested screamer —

that huge bird almost a lizard,"

its snake and the potent apple.

He tells us

that "for love

that will gaze an eagle blind,

that is like a Hercules

climbing the trees

in the garden of the Hesperides,

from forty-five to seventy

is the best age,"

commending it

as a fine art, as an experiment,

a duty or as merely recreation.

One must not call him ruffian

nor friction a calamity —

the fight to be affectionate:

"no truth can be fully known

until it has been tried

by the tooth of disputation."

The blue panther with black eyes,

the basalt panther with blue eyes,

entirely graceful —

one must give them the path —

the black obsidian Diana

who "darkeneth her countenance

as a bear doth,

causing her husband to sigh,"

the spiked hand

that has an affection for one

and proves it to the bone,

impatient to assure you

that impatience is the mark of independence

not of bondage.

"Married people often look that way" —

"seldom and cold, up and down,

mixed and malarial

with a good day and bad."

"When do we feed?"

We occidentals are so unemotional,

we quarrel as we feed;

one's self is quite lost,

the irony preserved

in "the Ahasuerus tête à tête banquet"

with its "good monster, lead the way,"

with little laughter

and munificence of humor

in that quixotic atmosphere of frankness

in which "Four o'clock does not exist

but at five o'clock

the ladies in their imperious humility

are ready to receive you";

in which experience attests

that men have power

and sometimes one is made to feel it.

He says, "what monarch would not blush

to have a wife

with hair like a shaving-brush?

The fact of woman

is not `the sound of the flute

but every poison.'"

She says, "`Men are monopolists

of stars, garters, buttons

and other shining baubles' —

unfit to be the guardians

of another person's happiness."

He says, "These mummies

must be handled carefully —

`the crumbs from a lion's meal,

a couple of shins and the bit of an ear';

turn to the letter M

and you will find

that `a wife is a coffin,'

that severe object

with the pleasing geometry

stipulating space and not people,

refusing to be buried

and uniquely disappointing,

revengefully wrought in the attitude

of an adoring child

to a distinguished parent."

She says, "This butterfly,

this waterfly, this nomad

that has `proposed

to settle on my hand for life.' —

What can one do with it?

There must have been more time

in Shakespeare's day

to sit and watch a play.

You know so many artists are fools."

He says, "You know so many fools

who are not artists."

The fact forgot

that "some have merely rights

while some have obligations,"

he loves himself so much,

he can permit himself

no rival in that love.

She loves herself so much,

she cannot see herself enough —

a statuette of ivory on ivory,

the logical last touch

to an expansive splendor

earned as wages for work done:

one is not rich but poor

when one can always seem so right.

What can one do for them —

these savages

condemned to disaffect

all those who are not visionaries

alert to undertake the silly task

of making people noble?

This model of petrine fidelity

who "leaves her peaceful husband

only because she has seen enough of him" —

that orator reminding you,

"I am yours to command."

"Everything to do with love is mystery;

it is more than a day's work

to investigate this science."

One sees that it is rare —

that striking grasp of opposites

opposed each to the other, not to unity,

which in cycloid inclusiveness

has dwarfed the demonstration

of Columbus with the egg —

a triumph of simplicity —

that charitive Euroclydon

of frightening disinterestedness

which the world hates,

admitting:

"I am such a cow,

if I had a sorrow,

I should feel it a long time;

I am not one of those

who have a great sorrow

in the morning

and a great joy at noon;"

which says: "I have encountered it

among those unpretentious

protegés of wisdom,

where seeming to parade

as the debater and the Roman,

the statesmanship

of an archaic Daniel Webster

persists to their simplicity of temper

as the essence of the matter:

`Liberty and union

now and forever;'

the book on the writing-table;

the hand in the breast-pocket."