by Italo Svevo
He did nothing simply, simply because theorisers are very slow when it comes to acting.
X
That is how the old man found himself alone, face to face with his theory.
Meanwhile the very long preface to his work was finished and was to his mind a magnificent success, so much so that he was always reading it over as a stimulus to further efforts.
In the preface he had only set out to prove that the world needed his work. Though he did not know it, this was the easiest part of his treatise. In fact every work that proposes to build up a theory consists of two parts. The first is devoted to demolishing previous theories, or, better still, to criticizing the existing state of affairs, whereas to the second falls the difficult task of building up things on a new foundation, and this is far from easy. It has been the fate of a theorist to publish in his lifetime two whole volumes to prove that things were thoroughly bad and unjust. The world was out of joint and refused to mend itself even when his heirs published the third posthumous volume, the object of which was to show it the way it should go. A theory is always complex and in developing it it is impossible to see it at once in all its bearings. Theorists appear preaching the destruction of a particular animal, cats, for instance. They write and write and do not at first notice that round their theory, as a necessary corollary, rats spring up wholesale. It is a long time before the theorist stumbles against this difficulty and asks in despair: “What am I going to do with these rats?”
My old man was still a long way from these troubles. There is nothing nicer or more fluent than the preface to a theory. The old man found that youth in this world lacked something which would make it even more attractive, a healthy old age to love it and help it. Plenty of work and thought had gone into the preface, because there he had to state the problem in all its aspects. So the old man began with the beginning, like the Bible. Old men—when they were still not so very old—had reproduced themselves in the young with great ease and some pleasure. As life was passed on from one organism to another, it was difficult to be sure whether it had been raised or improved. The centuries of history behind us were too short to give us the necessary experience. But after reproduction there might be spiritual progress if the relations between old and young were perfect, and if a healthy youth could lean for support upon a thoroughly healthy old age. Hence the aim of the book was to prove the need of health in old men for the good of the world. According to the old man the future of the world, that is, the power of the young who were to make this future, depended upon the aid and the instruction of the old.
There was also a second part to the preface. If he had been able, the old man would have divided it into many parts. The second tried to prove the advantage that would accrue to an old man from a pure relationship with the young. With his own children purity was easy, but his relations must not in any circumstances be impure with the companions of his children. The old man, if pure, would enjoy a longer and healthier life, which, in his view, would be of the utmost utility to society.
The first chapter was also a preface, for, of course, he must describe the actual state of things. Old men misused youth and youth despised old men. Young men passed laws to prevent old men remaining at the head of affairs, and on their side old men promoted laws to prevent the rise of young men when they were too young. Does not this rivalry imply a state of affairs harmful to human progress? What had age to do with appointments to office?
These prefaces, of which I give only the kernel, brought a good deal of trouble and a good deal of health to the poor old man for several months. Then there were other chapters which went easily enough and gave him no trouble, in spite of his weak state, the polemical chapters. One was devoted to showing that old age was not a disease. The old man thought he had been particularly happy in that chapter. How was it possible to believe that old age was a disease, when it was only the continuation of youth? Some other element must intervene to change health into disease, something which the old man failed to discover.
Then, according to the old man’s plan, the work was to be divided into two parts. One was to treat of the manner in which society must be organised if it was to have healthy old men, the other dealt with the organisation of youth in such a way as to regulate its relations with old age.
Here, however, at every step the old man found himself interrupted in his work by the invasion of the rodents. I have already spoken of the sheets he had laid aside, wrapped in a piece of paper, meaning to begin work upon them again when some of his doubts had been cleared up. Many batches of other sheets had afterwards been sent to join them.
Thus he never forgot that money had played an important part in his adventure with the girl. For some days he wrote that money, which usually belongs to the old, ought to be confiscated to prevent its being used for purposes of corruption and it is astonishing how many hours elapsed before he realised how painful it would be for him to be deprived of his own money. Then he stopped writing on the subject and laid these pages aside in the expectation of receiving more light.
On another occasion he thought of insisting that even in the first class in the elementary school it should not be forgotten that the purpose of life is a healthy old age. When youth sins it does not suffer and it causes less suffering. Then the sin of an old man is equal to about two sins of a young man. It is a sin quite apart from the example he sets. Hence, according to our theorist, from the very first children should study how to grow old healthily. But then he felt that with such reasoning the path to virtue was not clearly blazed. If a young man’s sin were so light a matter, where was the education of the old man to begin? And on the paper in which he buried these sheets he wrote: Must consider when the education of the old man is to commence.
There were pages in which the old man endeavoured to prove that, if old age was to be healthy, it must be surrounded with healthy young people. The system of setting aside sheets instead of destroying them helped the growth of contradictions which escaped the author’s notice. These last pages revealed in the writer a certain amount of ill-feeling against youth. On the whole it was true that, if youth had been healthy, old age would not have been able to sin. Its greater physical strength already protected it from violence. On the sheet that enclosed so much philosophy was written: “With whom must morality begin?”
And the old man went on piling up his doubts with the idea that he was building something. But the effort was really too much for his strength, and with the return of winter the doctor also noticed a further physical decline in his patient. He made inquiries and ended by guessing that the theory which had done him so much good was now doing harm. “Why don’t you change the subject?” he asked him. “You should put this work on one side and take up something else.”
The old man would not take him into his confidence, and declared that he was just playing with the subject as a pastime. He feared the critic’s eye, but he thought he would fear it only until he had finished the work.
This time the doctor’s intervention did not have a good effect. The old man meant to settle seriously down to the work, solving one doubt after another, and began by returning to the question of what the old should expect from the young. For several days he wrote in growing excitement, then for several days he sat at his desk reading what he had written over and over again.
Once again he wrapped up the old and the new pages in the sheet on which was written the question he could not answer. Then he wrote wearily under it several times the word: Nothing.
* * *
He was found dead with the pen, over which had passed his last breath, in his mouth.
melville house classics
OTHER TITLES IN
THE ART OF THE NOVELLA SERIES
BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER / HERMAN MELVILLE
THE LESSON OF THE MASTER / HENRY JAMES
MY LIFE / ANTON CHEKHOV
THE DEVIL / LEO TOLSTOY
THE TOUCHSTONE / EDITH WHARTON
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLE
S / ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
THE DEAD / JAMES JOYCE
FIRST LOVE / IVAN TURGENEV
A SIMPLE HEART / GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING / RUDYARD KIPLING
MICHAEL KOHLHAAS / HEINRICH VON KLEIST
THE BEACH OF FALESÁ / ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
THE HORLA / GUY DE MAUPASSANT
THE ETERNAL HUSBAND / FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG / MARK TWAIN
THE LIFTED VEIL / GEORGE ELIOT
THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES / HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING / WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
BENITO CERENO / HERMAN MELVILLE
MATHILDA / MARY SHELLEY
STEMPENYU: A JEWISH ROMANCE / SHOLEM ALEICHEM
FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES / JOSEPH CONRAD
HOW THE TWO IVANS QUARRELLED / NIKOLAI GOGOL
MAY DAY / F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
RASSELAS, PRINCE ABYSSINIA / SAMUEL JOHNSON
THE DIALOGUE OF THE DOGS / MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
THE LEMOINE AFFAIR / MARCEL PROUST
THE COXON FUND / HENRY JAMES
THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH / LEO TOLSTOY
TALES OF BELKIN / ALEXANDER PUSHKIN
THE AWAKENING / KATE CHOPIN
ADOLPHE / BENJAMIN CONSTANT
THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS / SARAH ORNE JEWETT
PARNASSUS ON WHEELS / CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
THE NICE OLD MAN AND THE PRETTY GIRL / ITALO SVEVO
LADY SUSAN / JANE AUSTEN
JACOB’S ROOM / VIRGINIA WOOLF
TITLES IN THE COMPANION SERIES
THE CONTEMPORARY ART OF THE NOVELLA
THE PATHSEEKER / IMRE KERTÉSZ
THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR / GILBERT ADAIR
THE NORTH OF GOD / STEVE STERN
CUSTOMER SERVICE / BENOÎT DUTEURTRE
BONSAI / ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA
ILLUSION OF RETURN / SAMIR EL-YOUSSEF
CLOSE TO JEDENEW / KEVIN VENNEMAN
A HAPPY MAN / HANSJÖRG SCHERTENLEIB
SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / TAO LIN
LUCINELLA / LORE SEGAL
SANDOKAN / NANNI BALESTRINI
THE UNION JACK / IMRE KERTÉSZ
