Equinox I (04).pdf
Equinox I (04).pdf Equinox I (04).pdf
346 GLAZIERS’ HOUSES OR THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT I will write him a very taunting letter.—As You Like it. IN these latter days, when (too often) a newspaper proprietor is like a Buddhist monk, afraid to scratch his head lest he should incommode his vermin, it is indeed a joy for a young and nameless author to be presented with a long sword by a cordial editor, with the injunction: “There, my lad, sweep away, never mind what you hit—I’ll stand the racket.” Whoosh! off we go. One, two, three—crash! What’s that? “Aere perennius”? Or a perennial ass? Let us see—a very curious problem. A problem not to be solved by mere surface scraping. Well then? A thankless and invidious task it may seem to pierce deeper than the “wolf in Dr. Jaeger's clothing” of our wittiest woman and most alluring morphinomane. That task is ours. For last night in the visions of mine head upon my bed I beheld, strangely interwoven with this striking picture, the scene between Little Red Riding Hood and her sick grandmother—how perverted! For in my dream it seemed that the old lady had devoured the wolf and that the scourge of the
GLAZIERS’ HOUSES Tories was but a bed-ridden and toothless hag, mumbling the senile curses and jests which she could no longer articulate. True it is that the Word of Shaw is quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword. Yet the habit of swordswollowing is probably fatal to the suicidal intentions of a Brutus, and it has certainly grown on him until he can no longer slay either himself or another. A dweller in the glass houses of Fad, he has thrown stones at the fishy god. A Society Shimei, he has spat against the wind, and his beard is befouled. True, every thought of Shaw is a great thought; and so equable and far-seeing is the artist, that its contradictory appears with it. His births are all Siamese twins; his god is Janus; his sign is Gemini . . . but his end is (I fear) not to rise above the equilibrium of contraries by a praeter-Hegelian dialectic, but to sink wearily between his two stools, a lamentable loon. . . . This Nulli Secundus, inflated with fermenting Grape-Nuts! For in all that mass of analysis lucid and terrible I cannot recall a single line of beauty, rarely a note of ecstasy; with one exception (John Tanner), hardly a hero. Even he not a little absurd. He has seen through the shams of romance, and marriage, and free love, and literary pose, and medical Ju-Ju, and religious rant, and political twaddle, and socialist Buncombe and—every phase of falsehood. . . . But he has hardly grasped that each such falsehood is but a shadow of some sun of truth. He does not perceive the ineffable glory of the Universe in its whole and in each part. He has smitten at the shadow of a shadow: it falls—the world is filth. Let him 347
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GLAZIERS’ HOUSES<br />
Tories was but a bed-ridden and toothless hag, mumbling the<br />
senile curses and jests which she could no longer articulate.<br />
True it is that the Word of Shaw is quick and powerful,<br />
sharper than a two-edged sword. Yet the habit of swordswollowing<br />
is probably fatal to the suicidal intentions of a<br />
Brutus, and it has certainly grown on him until he can no<br />
longer slay either himself or another.<br />
A dweller in the glass houses of Fad, he has thrown stones<br />
at the fishy god. A Society Shimei, he has spat against the<br />
wind, and his beard is befouled.<br />
True, every thought of Shaw is a great thought; and so<br />
equable and far-seeing is the artist, that its contradictory<br />
appears with it. His births are all Siamese twins; his god is<br />
Janus; his sign is Gemini . . . but his end is (I fear) not to rise<br />
above the equilibrium of contraries by a praeter-Hegelian<br />
dialectic, but to sink wearily between his two stools, a<br />
lamentable loon. . . . This Nulli Secundus, inflated with<br />
fermenting Grape-Nuts!<br />
For in all that mass of analysis lucid and terrible I cannot<br />
recall a single line of beauty, rarely a note of ecstasy; with one<br />
exception (John Tanner), hardly a hero. Even he not a little<br />
absurd.<br />
He has seen through the shams of romance, and marriage,<br />
and free love, and literary pose, and medical Ju-Ju, and<br />
religious rant, and political twaddle, and socialist Buncombe<br />
and—every phase of falsehood. . . . But he has hardly<br />
grasped that each such falsehood is but a shadow of some sun<br />
of truth. He does not perceive the ineffable glory of the<br />
Universe in its whole and in each part. He has smitten at the<br />
shadow of a shadow: it falls—the world is filth. Let him<br />
347
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