Orpheus Emerged
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ed the remaining flight and was soon dis-
solved into the darkness of the alley below.
Michael then got up and walked across
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the two rooms under the scrutiny of all the
eyes. He went into his room and closed the
door quietly. There was a hush—followed
by many mumbles of excitement and
curiosity, and finally, the murmur of depar-
ture. The party was quietly breaking up and
everybody was going elsewhere.
Maureen put on her coat and went out
with the others. She confessed that she was
afraid of Michael—at least, for this night—
and that she wouldn’t sleep there at all costs;
and Barbara extended her an invitation to
stay at her place for the night. So that Michael
was left alone in the apartment that night,
with the broken lamp left as it lay—and with
whatever thoughts he had.
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IV
WHEN MAUREEN
RETURNED
to her apartment the following day, she
found a note from Michael stating that
he would be gone for awhile, perhaps a
week or so, on a trip south. He had
packed a small bag.
Michael had the habit of going off on
short trips, especially when he began to
feel the pressure of his own nervous
tension, so that Maureen was not too
alarmed at his absence. He always
came back.
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Paul, too, had disappeared from the
campus scene. Leo was of the opinion that
he, for all that had happened, was probably
gone for good. No one as yet understood
the full significance of the violent scene at
the party, with its touching and gentle
denouement, so that the absence of both
“participants” tended to reduce interest in
the mysterious affair to a minimum.
A third absence was noted around the
general campus neighborhood, that of
both Anthony and Marie. Arthur, who had
grown accustomed to plenty of excite-
ment, now felt suddenly becalmed; and
though he was immersed in his studies of
that week, he waited with some impa-
tience for the return of Michael, or even of
Paul or Anthony, for life was certainly not
the same without these tempestuous
beings.
And so one day, Paul returned—exactly a
week after Spring Day eve—and it was Leo
who found him sitting on a bench in the
park. It was a rather gloomy, gray-skied,
ominous day full of the smell of rain and
thawing spring muds.
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“Where have you been, Paul?” cried Leo
happily, looking anxiously into his friend’s
face. “I thought you were gone for good.”
“I knew you would think that,” Paul
answered, smiling and blushing. “Well,
how are you, Leo?”
“All right. Where did you go?”
“Just out of the city for a while.”
“To do what?” Leo persisted.
“Come on,” Paul ignored his questioning.
“Let’s go straightaway to Michael’s. I was
going there myself, but now that you’re
here, we’ll go together…”
Leo glanced sharply at the other.
“Do you think Michael will want to see
you?” he asked, remembering all too clear-
ly the incident of the floor lamp.
“Certainly. He’ll have forgotten about
everything. Don’t you even know Michael
at all?”
They walked up X Street. “Michael’s
been gone all this time too,” Leo told Paul.
“They say he took a trip south. And where
did you go?…what did you do?”
“Well, if you insist on knowing…I just
went on a little excursion through the country.
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I slept
on the
grass, ate
fruit for
breakfast.
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That’s all.”
They were going up the stairs at
Michael’s apartment when they met
Maureen coming down with a shopping bag
under her arm. She seemed to be in a hurry.
“Well,” was the first thing she said.
“Michael’s going to be glad to see you!” She
paused and glanced at Paul’s clothes. “You
might as well give it up anyway. Michael’s
not back from his trip yet. Why do you insist
on bothering him?”
“It’s none of your business,” said Paul
evenly. Maureen shrugged her shoulders
and went down the stairs; they heard the
hall door alarm as she went out. Paul con-
tinued on up the stairway and walked care-
lessly into Maureen’s apartment; he went to
the front room and flung himself on the
couch. “Where are you, Leo?” he called.
Leo walked into the apartment indecisively.
“What are we going to do here?” he asked. “I
don’t think Maureen will like it!” He stood over
the couch and looked down at Paul.
“You noticed the door wasn’t locked,
didn’t you?” Paul said to him. “It’s fairly an
invitation, my friend. But I had a purpose
in wanting to come up here…what was it?
Oh, yes! Poetry.”
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“What?”
Paul went into Michael’s bedroom and
began going through the workdesk drawer.
“Ah,” he said, holding up several sheets of
paper. “At last. This has been my first oppor-
tunity to take these.”
Leo, with his head in the doorway—a pic-
ture of reluctant eagerness—asked, “What
are they?”
“They’re Michael’s writings, some of
them, at least.”
Paul stuffed the papers in his pockets and
started to walk out of the apartment. “Come
on,” he beckoned to Leo. “Let’s go out now.”
“What’s Michael going to say your walk-
ing into his bedroom and stealing his writ-
ings. He’ll be so mad all over again, only
worse!”
Paul was laughing.
“Are you going to keep them?” Leo
inquired.
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“If I
like them.”
They were down on the street again.
Paul, who had stopped, was looking up at the
dark cloudy sky and sniffing the air. “What a
terrible day,” he shuddered. “And yet there’s
energy in the air. It may be a day of power.”
They walked on up X Street. “Well,” Leo
concluded. “That was a neat bit of lifting.
Now what are you going to do with his poet-
ry?”
“Read it.” Paul was already reading a page
“Is that all you did,” Leo asked, smiling at
Paul, “on your excursion, sleep on the grass
and eat fruit for breakfast? Hey?”
“That’s enough, isn’t it?” Paul said. “It
was beautiful, you know. Will you look at
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this,” he added, waving a paper at Leo.
“Listen. I’ll read you a line or two here:
‘Symbols pristine and splendorous I need,
for my journey down this corridor: here,
now, too late to rejoin the others, and acci-
dent need not apologize.’ Foo! As though
accident apologized for anything! What
utter rot he writes!”
“What is he talking about?” Leo asked,
leaning over to look at the paper. “Symbols,
corridors…”
“And here’s some more,” Paul went on,
ignoring Leo’s question. “ ‘I am high—I
reprise my sympathy for the masses.’ More
nonsense—he won’t call a spade a spade,
the masses indeed! He means his family, of
course. That’s the rotten part about all this
business, this poetry. Oh! And look here:
‘On the other side of this corridor, across
these obstructions inviting insanity, I see
new emotions and a new humanity: a cul-
tural emotional, ultimacies, new man, shad-
ows of this grotesque deformity: Beauty is
tyrant, passion overrules; this instinct is
mute, this vision Eternal.’ You see, don’t
you, Leo, that when he cannot express what
he means, he says ‘this instinct is mute’ and
such trash. Ultimacies… Now as to that, I
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don’t know. Cultural emotionals… Yes.
Hmm. I only criticize what I understand, of
course. Those points there, they may be of
course way beyond my learning. Michael is
a very learned fellow…”
Leo began to laugh and had to stop short
in the midst of their walking. “Really, Paul,
you make me laugh. First you call Michael
a dunce and a fool, and the next moment
you dub him as ‘very learned.’ He’s neither,
you know. You should learn to control your
excesses—”
“Yes? Well, then, if that’s so, what does
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this mean: ‘Mind the basis of Eternity.’ Now
what on earth is that if it isn’t profound and
learned? Mark you, Leo, I only criticize
those parts of the work that I understand.
But there are places where Michael is far
beyond me…”
Leo was still laughing.
“ ‘Mind the basis of Eternity,’ ” repeated
Paul almost angrily. “Explain that if you
will, Professor!”
“It wouldn’t be difficult,” gasped Leo
faintly, “if I had knowledge of his special
vocabulary, or even if I read the whole
poem. You can be so charmingly naive—
really, it’s amazing to watch.”
Paul was thumbing through some other
pages…now, he cried out exultantly, “And
this! This I expected to find, by all means!
Listen:
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‘One October
feeling is worth
ten archetypal
tragedies that
occur beneath
the tender blue
char of morning
skies: and one
melancholy
frowse of har-
vest stack, now,
beyond measure
surpasses this
news of human
travail.’
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Don’t you see, in order to speak with God—
as he puts it—he’s trying to de-humanize
himself. Claims here October moves him
more than news of human tragedy.”
“That’s interesting…”
“And now, to cap all the nonsense, is this
despairing cry!” Paul went on excitedly.
“‘Quelqu’un à dérangé ma noirçeur! This I
scream to a deaf and dumb cosmos.’ That’s
nice, isn’t it Leo, but yet so typical of the stu-
pid poet. ‘Someone has disturbed my dark-
ness,’ he cries in French. Why on earth in
French? His darkness indeed! That’s why he
will sleep at all times of the day and night,
and dream. What was that I heard a few
weeks ago in class, someone was talking
about it…the death-instinct, the death-
instinct of Freud…”
“Perhaps.”
“And he adds here, rather sulkily, ‘better
to live in hell than to die in heaven.’ Does he
claim it was heaven before?…ha ha! Then
he admits it…”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
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Leo now inquired impatiently.
“All esoteric matters,” Paul said. “And
look at this!” — he had found more lines to
read — “ ‘Alone with no one to love, is hell
alive: can I not wait for bunglers and stum-
blers that straggle out to me? Here, as at the
end of a telescope, a crater of the moon. I
wait for one of my kind with whom to wallow
in my kindness.’ Now that,” Paul scoffed, “is
sheer nonsense. He’s trying to work up the
reader’s pity, or God’s. And he adds:
‘Aesthetic hell, I’m home.’ Ho ho! That’s
good…he knows more about himself than he
cares to admit. Calls it a ‘sordid denoue-
ment.’ But here, his hope is regained; he
says, ‘Tell me—for my emotions have always
been, since then, but shifting sand—tell me
that this is Eternity, the Sphinx and not the
sand.’ What does he think he’s found? Is he
panting after the new vision too, like all the
others? Ha ha ha.”
“I swear,” Leo said, “I’ve never heard
anything like your criticism. Why don’t you
do it objectively? It’s terrible to walk with
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you and hear you defame the work of a man
which you’ve just stolen.”
“I’ll go one better,” Paul laughed, leering
at Leo. “I’ll burn the whole works—what
would you think of that?”
“What? You mean, what would he think of
that! You’re being very stupid, by the way; I
don’t think you understand what he’s saying…”
“Oh, yes!” cried Paul. “I understand bet-
ter than he does. Look! He bases the whole
long poem on a line from one of his dreams.
Here, on the first page, it says ‘from a
dream—’ and the quotation, taken, you see,
from a dream he had, reads like this: ‘Is this
the way I’m supposed to feel?’ Don’t you see,
Leo, he’s searching for a new emotion, since
he has rejected the one he had before. So
first he disclaims the old emotion
by saying,
am I supposed to feel it anyway? Then…at
the end of the poem, after a thorough explo-
ration of his so-called new emotion and new
vision, which is some sort of mystical solip-
sism undergone in a ‘dark corridor’—per-
haps a symbolism from a dream—he finds
that his journey into these regions, across
this corridor, has been a failure. It reads:
‘This corridor alone remains—this corridor-
ial loneliness.’ Now, I admit that all this is
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lovely and appealing to the eye, to some
extent, but it’s failure altogether.”
“You may be right,” Leo put in, “but still
it’s no reason for you to burn it. And I want
to read these some time.”
“Failure altogether,” Paul continued,
ignoring Leo’s remarks. “He finds that
there is no new emotion, or if there is, that
it’s denied to him at least. Like that fellow
Rimbaud that Arthur is always talking
about. I was thinking about this Rimbaud
all the past week.”
“Paul,” said Leo warmly, “you’re the most
unusual fellow! Is that what you were think-
ing about on your bed of grass as you
munched your fruit?”
“Perhaps,” Paul laughed. “That and many
other things, I admit. Now, let’s look at a few
more of these things. This one is called ‘Song
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of My Modern Sorrow.’ A likely title! He has a
flair for attracting the eye! Look, that first line
explains his whole failure—let’s sit down
here and I’ll read you this…”
They were now in the middle of the cam-
pus green, and sat on a bench.
Immediately, a flurry of pigeons swarmed
around them.
“ ‘Happiness is dead!’ he cries straight off.
There is the root of his failure—I’ll explain.
He goes on—‘Imponderable sorrow now
rules, now stretches its moody nether-glow
across my life, my city, and my soul. In the
cities, silence mutters smokily. This is the
Black Age.’ Ho ho! Now he really is down in
the dumps, the Black Age he calls it. First
having failed to find a new emotion, the