by Jack Kerouac
about it, I mean your affair with Marie in
the Quarter…”
Michael seemed startled.
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 157
“Our friend Julius happened to see you
there a few days ago, well … and he told me
about it.”
Smiling nervously, Michael motioned
Arthur to sit on the bed; then he shrugged his
shoulders wearily. “I suppose everyone will
know in time.”
“And moreover,” Arthur went on, “Paul is
back. He’s been away for a spell himself. I
saw him just now with Leo in the campus
park.”
Michael didn’t say anything. Quite irrele-
vantly, he raised his eyebrows and said, “I
don’t care who finds out about Marie and me.
I don’t care at all what happens. What have
you been doing, Arthur?” Michael extin-
guished his cigarette in the ashtray on the
arm of the chair. He looked very gloomy.
“I’ve been thinking something out,” Arthur
said, making himself comfortable on the bed,
propping a pillow under his arm and leaning
on his elbow. “I want your opinion on these
matters. I’ve prepared a sort of manifesto,
let’s say, or an essay of a sort. It’s on the sub-
ject of the artist…”
“That’s a nonsensical pursuit,” smiled
Michael.
“Not theoretically.
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 158
You must admit
that much of
modern thought
is centered
around the
problem of the
artist and
society, of
the artist and
himself
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 159
—as in Rimbaud, for instance, in his case…”
“Yes, I know,” admitted Michael discon-
solately, “but so many artists are preoccu-
pied with the question, they can’t find time
to create.”
“One sometimes has to clear the decks.
Wagner spent years arranging his intellectual system before he could compose.
Clearly, also, it is one of the central absorp-
tions of Thomas Mann.”
“I admit that.”
“Look, Michael…” and Arthur extracted
a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Here I’ve
worked out a symbolism, a modern one that
is…ah, applicable to my system. It’s
Prometheus! The artist, Prometheus,
steals fire from the gods—the fire, the
secret, of creation—and brings it down to
earth. I admit of course that none of this is
original. Rimbaud secured an idea much like it from Ballanche, and I, of course, from
Rimbaud. Now you see the system implies
much that is Cabalistic, in a sense: you
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 160
know, to stand on the threshold of vegetable life
facing God and sharing his secrets, as in Blake
also. You! You, for instance, fit into the symbol-
ism—as Prometheus, the thief of divine fire.
I’ve read your poetry. In it, I find that you are
attempting to speak with the impulse of
God…in that poem ‘Morphina’ for instance.
I’m beginning to see what you’re after, but I
have here something further for you…”
“I Prometheus?” asked Michael almost
angrily.
“As a symbol—”
“I know. But when I could be Orpheus!
Have you ever looked into that? There’s a sym-
bol for you!”
“What do you mean?”
“Orpheus! Orpheus! ” shouted Michael.
Then he relapsed once more to his shy smile.
“Oh this is all nonsense.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, you say that the artist—in this case,
myself—you say that I am a plausible symbol
of Prometheus. Prometheus the artist, when LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 161
I could be Orpheus, the artist-man! Do you understand what I’m trying to say? When I
could be the whole artist and man.
Unchained! you see—for Prometheus is chained to a rock, God knows—unwound-
ed, unlike Cocteau’s poet, or Henry
James’ artist; unsevered, Arthur, unsevered!”
“You’ll have to explain.”
“I fear that it will all be clear to you any-
way before long. A chain of events and not
my words will illumine the meaning. Ah, but
I’m tired…”
“Never mind that. In those poems that
you completed I found—”
“Completed!” interrupted Michael. “But
I’ve never completed anything.”
“How could you then account for ever
having created anything?”
“I don’t know. That’s how I feel. The
pathways of creation are devious.”
“Well,” said Arthur, “I still don’t follow
you. You sound incoherent.”
“I mean—Well perhaps I have completed
something. There are the parts, and since
these parts are in themselves complete, then
there must exist somewhere a complete
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 162
whole.”
“Precisely,” said Arthur wearily, as though
he had wanted to explain this all along, and
was impatient to continue with what he was
saying. “Now, the artist—”
“The artist! The artist!” Michael was in a
savage mood, and he was constantly pressed
to smile, in order to undo his antagonism.
“All right, go on. But be careful…”
“Of what?”
Michael turned his eyes to the rooftops
again. “I don’t know. I sound like a smug
father, to tell you that; and God knows, no
one is ever old enough to give advice. Well
what I mean is be careful of art, as art: if you
take it seriously, ultra-seriously, there is
liable to be—”
“The consequences are what I crave,”
Arthur said subtly.
Michael looked at Arthur in surprise.
“We’re dissimilar,” he concluded, after
watching Arthur for several moments.
“Perhaps, at least… What I mean—and I
often wonder if I ever say anything that is
anywhere near the point—is that the conse-
quences of espousing art like a priest, say, are
often—harmful—to the whole man.”
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 163
“In art I
intend to find
wholeness,”
Arthur put in.
“In art,”
Michael said,
“I found
halfness.”
They were silent, staring at each other.
The door suddenly opened and Maureen
walked in. Her jaw was trembling, she was
pale, and glaring at Michael. There was a
shocked silence.
“Get out,” she said.
“Well?” Michael began.
“Get out. I just saw that witch Marie down at
the markets—and she told me everything.”
>
After a pause, Michael shrugged. “I don’t
care,” he said wearily.
“Get out,” repeated Maureen. “I want
you to get out.” She was holding a bag of
provisions under her arm that she’d just
been buying before Marie approached her.
“And why?”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t get out. And you
too, young man. Get out with him. All of
you are children, and all of you are fools.”
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 164
Michael laughed.
“Laugh,” said Maureen. “Laugh because
you’re ignorant. Get out. Don’t ever come
back, it might be dangerous.”
“Nay fatal,” Michael mocked.
“Get out,” she repeated again quietly.
Michael sighed and rose from the chair:
“My clothes—”
“I’ll pack them and give them to you
tomorrow. Get out right away.”
Michael and Arthur walked out of the
apartment.
“Well,” said Arthur as they walked down
the stairs and out onto X Street, “does that
mean the end of your affair with Maureen?
I guess it does,” he concluded himself.
“Yes,” sighed Michael. He seemed a lit-
tle weary; even the menacing scene with
Maureen had not succeeded in bringing
him out of his indolent ennui. “It was con-
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 165
venient while it lasted.”
Arthur gave Michael a slanting glance.
“Is that all you can say?”
Michael sighed again and didn’t answer.
They walked along across the campus.
Presently, he said, “That’s all the situation
warrants.”
Arthur, a trifle embarrassed, repressed an
impulse to express his feelings for Maureen
and for her position in the matter. It had
been fairly evident to him, that to Maureen,
the affair had held more meaning than could
be encompassed in Michael’s bland use of
the word “convenient.”
“Now—” Michael said, falling deeper and
deeper into his gloominess, “Now, I suppose
it’s time to go to Marie’s.”
“Why?”
“She is a witch, that Marie,” Michael
reflected tiredly. “There was no need to tell
Maureen everything. What can hurt a
woman like Maureen more than to tell her
to her face that her lover has been made the
victim of a conquest—”
“Well, hardly.”
“I suppose,” Michael droned on, “that
Marie is the type who does a good job, a thor-
ough job, of things when she transgresses…”
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 166
“Well, hardly!”
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 167
Arthur almost laughed. “Strange talk!
Transgression! Now you’re no longer the artist
beyond good and evil, but a sinner in arms…”
“You must admit it’s hard to purge your
system of the notion,” Michael mumbled. “I
knew a man once who had himself psycho-
analyzed in order to get rid of the notion,
and to be happy: good and evil, he didn’t
care one way or the other.
Good and evil
blur your
vision—God does-
n’t make the
distinction, you
know. You can’t
rid yourself of
it...especially
when you’re a
human being.
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 168
Biologically speaking, I’m afraid all poetic
vision is rot.”
“Now, now,” Arthur leered, “don’t let lit-
tle things let you down?”
Arthur laughed to conceal his confusion
on the matter. They had crossed the cam-
pus, and now they were walking down the
boulevard in the direction of Marie’s house.
“It’s going to rain soon,” Michael
observed. “It’s the end…”
Paul was sitting in Marie’s front room
when they arrived there, with his head
leaning on his hand, and staring fixedly into
space. When he saw Michael and Arthur,
he looked up and smiled, but said nothing.
Marie came out of the bedroom carrying
a towel and stopped short on seeing
Michael.
“Well?”
“Nothing,” mumbled Michael. “I only
came to see you about your telling
Maureen. It wasn’t necessary, you know.”
“It wasn’t necessary!” mimicked Marie
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 169
savagely. “Shut up, won’t you, and go home.”
She brushed past Michael and Arthur and
went into the kitchen.
“Well? Was it?” cried Michael, following
her. Marie did not answer. Michael came
back and dropped himself wearily on the
couch. He stared dully at Paul across the
room.
“And where have you been?” he demand-
ed sullenly.
“I heard that while you were in the
Bohemian Quarter—that is, when Julius saw
you,” Paul rushed on to say, heedless of the
question, “and according to his version, of
course, that you stopped to talk to some children
in the park—that was the way he put it—”
“Well, what of that?”
“I’m only referring to the incident he
described where you stopped to talk to some
children—”
“All right, all right!” cried Michael impa-
tiently. “What are you saying?”
“Just—thank you.”
There was a silence, during which Arthur
seemed bewildered at all this. Michael only
tilted his head to one side and gave Paul a
grave and scornful glance.
Marie was back, crossing the room. “I’ll
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 170
have no loud talking and yelling. All of you
had best go home, anyway. You’re of no use
here.”
Michael followed her into the bedroom.
Anthony was peacefully asleep, with just the
hint of a smile on his lips.
“What a big baby!” Michael exclaimed
softly. Marie turned to him and almost
smiled. But solemnly she said, “And what
do you think you are?”
“I’m not a baby.”
“Hmm?”
Marie lowered the windowpane,
arranged Anthony’s blankets, motioned
Michael out of the room, and quietly closed
the door. She went over to a desk drawer
and took out a cigarette and lit it.
Arthur, of course, was very embarrassed
and uncomfortable; particularly now since
Michael and Marie had ceased to harangue
with one another: the situation warranted
some haranguing, else how account, in
moral terms, for the derelict in the next
room. But Marie seemed quite calm with
her cigarette, and Michael seemed to have
fo
rgotten his anger over the Maureen mat-
ter. Paul, for his part, though betraying no
signs of discomfort, had lapsed again into a
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 171
preoccupied contemplation of space. The
first raindrop spat against the windowpane.
Marie went to the lamp and turned it on.
The evening had come on within the space
of a raindrop and the click of a lamp.
“Well?” Marie said, for none of the three
youths had spoken. Arthur looked with
some desperation towards Michael, then to
Paul.
Michael got up from the couch. “I guess
I’ll go home,” he said. Paul made no move
to rise from his chair.
“Do you still want to know why I told
Maureen?” Marie asked.
Michael shrugged. “I guess I know. Yes,
I do know. But I think it was stupid on your
part — you want to flagellate yourself, com-
plete the picture; but Maureen, well, what
about her?”
Marie was laughing. “Discounting what
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 172
you just said about flagellation, what are
you supposed to care about people’s feel-
ings, according to what you told me in the
Quarter?”
Marie was watching Michael intently.
Paul, too, was now watching.
“Suppose,” Michael said wearily, “sup-
pose I wanted the freedom to care when I
wanted to, and not to care when I didn’t?”
“That’s complicated!” Marie mocked,
blowing smoke towards Michael.
“Oh, is it?” sneered Michael, and turned
away.
“You’re a fool,” Marie added slowly.
“You’re frank at least,” he answered. “I
don’t mind your being frank. But you don’t
belong to this world: if you allege yourself
tied to it, why don’t you act accordingly?”
“Does that confuse you?”
“Yes, yes!” yelled Michael suddenly. “Oh,
LiveREADS
ORPHEUS EMERGED 173
why don’t you leave me alone!”
“Ha ha ha!” shouted Paul from his chair
in the corner.
“And you!” Michael cried, turning to Paul.
“Why don’t you go back to your wet grass
and your fruits!”
“Oh, you know about that?” Paul inquired
archly.
Michael threw up his hands. “It’s the way
you all think you understand my every next
move. It’s completely disgusting. Don’t you