Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

by Henry Miller

  The foregoing is paregorical. Those who understand will understand. Those who don’t will still have a bellyache—or a headache. Let me put it yet another way….

  We have all observed how our friends turn themselves over to the surgeon when the physician’s efforts have failed. Or to the analyst—for psychic surgery—when there is no other way out. Or to a disciple of the Bates method when the eye specialist confesses his helplessness. Or to a Christian Scientist practitioner when the only other resort seems suicide. In one way or another we all, when we get truly desperate, fling ourselves “into the arms of Jesus.”

  Now then…. Throughout the sad history of medicine there are marginal figures (beside whose names a great question mark is always affixed) who have worked miracles which the medicos (of all ages) endeavor to nullify, with nothing more, sometimes, than a shrug of the shoulders. Generally speaking, it is only the hopeless cases which are served up to this type of healer. It is said of Paracelsus, for example, that in several instances he resuscitated the dead. Jesus waited three days before raising Lazarus from the grave. And in Jesus’ own time there lived an even more astounding miracle worker than himself, if we are to believe the accounts given of his life and work. I refer to Apollonius of Tyana. As for Cabeza de Vaca, who led an altogether charmed life, until the moment that he was commanded to heal or die he had no knowledge whatever of his healing powers.

  The annals of folklore abound in spectacular cures by men and women whose names are now forgotten. One of the striking features of these heretical performances is what might be called the technique of nonrecognition. Just as Gandhi successfully exploited the doctrine of nonresistance, so these “aberrants” practiced nonrecognition: nonrecognition of sin, guilt, fear and disease … even death.

  The medico, on the other hand, is a type who is not only on the alert for the slightest symptoms of malaise but who instills in us his predilection for and obsession with maladies which are Hydraheaded, which increase in the measure that he so “successfully” copes with them. We pay a heavy price for the dubious benefits which our authorized “healers” confer. For the privilege of being repaired by a professional expert we are expected to sacrifice the rewards of years of labor. Those who are unable to afford the luxury of being carved to pieces by an expert butcher must die or cure themselves. The curious thing about these expensive overhaulings is that one is offered no guarantee of immunity (after the event) against other, often worse, ailments. Indeed, it seems to work the other way round. The more we are patched up the more dilapidated we become. One may continue to exist, but only as a walking cadaver.

  Today the physician, as we once thought him to be, is becoming obsolete. In his place there rules a queer triumvirate: the diagnostician, the laboratory worker, and the pharmacist. The holy family which doles out miracle drugs. The surgeon is now getting only the scraps, juicy scraps, I must say, since he is still extremely prosperous and always on the point of drinking himself to death.

  Now and then, at the sulphur baths, I meet a perfect specimen of health and vitality who was given up by the doctors years ago. They all tell the same story: they forgot about their ailments, they ignored them, they found something to do—something of a serviceable nature—which made them forget themselves.

  I wouldn’t be dwelling on this painful subject if it were not for the fact that I receive so many letters dealing with it, if it were not one of the most frequent topics of conversation when visitors arrive. Perhaps I attract people who are given to experimentation. Perhaps I attract individuals who are struggling manfully to pierce the hocus-pocus which envelops and obstructs our march through life. People are constantly supplying me with startling facts, amazing events, incredible experiences—as if I were another Charles Fort. They struggle, they rebel, they experiment, they get glimpses of truth, they are raised up by spasmodic gusts of self-confidence—and yet they are hopelessly enmeshed. “Dear fellow-sufferers,” I feel like saying, “I know you are perplexed and bewildered, I know you are riddled with doubts, I know you are searching and struggling, but would it not be wiser to stop struggling (even against struggling), wiser to give way to doubt completely, test everything in the light of your own conscience, and abide by the answer?” One will tell you that the stars are against him, another that his job is driving him crazy or that his boss is a bloodsucker, another that he had a bad start in life or that his wife is the cause of all his misery, another that he is not fit to cope with a world as rotten as ours, and so on and so on.

  However true these statements may be—God knows, they may be each and every one all too true!—however much we feel the need to justify our inexplicable behavior, the fact remains that once we have decided to live, once we have decided to enjoy life, none of these disturbing, distressing, crippling factors is of the least importance. I have known cripples and invalids who were radiant sources of joy and inspiration. And I have known “successful” men and women who were like running sores. Had we the power to resurrect the dead, what could we offer that life itself has not already offered, and continues to offer, in full measure? What is one to say to young people who, at the very threshold of manhood or womanhood, throw themselves like dogs at your feet and beg for a crust of comfort? What has come over these youngsters who, instead of upsetting the world with their fiery thoughts and deeds, are already seeking ways of escape from the world? What is happening to make the young old before their time, frustrated instead of liberated? What is it gives them the notion that they are useless and unfit for life’s struggles?

  What is happening? Life is making new demands upon us. The cosmic cataclysms which ancient man had to face have given way to moral cataclysms. The cyclotron not only smashed atoms, it smashed our moral codes. The day of wrath is upon us, but in an unexpected guise. Conveniences have been converted to scourges: only the gods know how to handle thunder and lightning. And yet, a truly young man, a product of the age, as we say—a Tamerlane, an Alexander, a Napoleon—would be fixing to throw a bomb which would restore us to sanity. He would not be thinking of ways of escape but of how to kill off his elders and all they represent. He would be thinking how to give this tired world a new lease on life. He would already be writing his name in the sky.

  There is a young French Canadian I know whose brain is seething with just such thoughts. He smells of genius a mile off. His letters are packed with extraordinary pickings and gleanings from every imaginable realm. He seems to be acquainted with all the doctrines and dogmas, even the most hairsplitting ones, which man has ejected from his tortured brain. He can write in the tone of a sage, a poet, a madman, or like “Jesus the Second.” In one letter he will lift me to the heavens, in the next crush me like a worm. He can take Freud and Einstein apart, put them together again, and make lamb fries of them. He can analyze his imaginary ailments with the skill and dexterity of a Hindu pundit. He can almost walk on water but he can’t swim worth a duck. He is at once the most endearing, the most lovable, the most promising young man and the most pestiferous. He can be cantankerous to such a degree that you feel like taking the axe to him. And when he chooses, he will woo you like a turtledove. In one letter he’s found the solution to the world’s problems, his own included, and in the following letter he’s impatiently marking time until his next incarnation. If today he’s avid about Ramakrishna or Krishnamurti, tomorrow he may be even more so about the Marquis de Sade or Gilles de Rais.

  The question which agitates my young friend most is: what role shall I play in life? Joseph Delteil, in an early work, says simply: “Sois potentat!” In the chapter called “Toi d’abord!” he begins thus: “Fouille-toi les tripes: là sont toute puissance et toute vérité! La vertu est un mot romain qui signifie estomac.” He continues—I am lifting phrases here and there: “Tu as droit de volupté. La vie est ta femme: baise-la à ta guise.… Méfie-toi des penseurs: ce sont des paralytiques. De doux et tristes impuissants…. Méfie-toi des rêveurs: ce sont des aveugles…. Sous prétexte qu’ils ne voient pas le monde,
ils le nient.”*

  Chesterton, in his book on Dickens, has much to say about playing the fool, or rather, being the fool. Above all, about appreciating the fool. In the chapter called “The Great Dickens Characters” we get passages like the following:

  “He [Dickens] declared two essential things about it [life]—that it was laughable, and that it was livable. The humble characters of Dickens do not amuse each other with epigrams; they amuse each other with themselves.

  “The key to the great characters of Dickens is that they are all great fools…. The great fool is a being who is above wisdom rather than below it. … A man can be entirely great while he is entirely foolish. We see this in the epic heroes, such as Achilles. Nay, a man can be entirely great because he is entirely foolish.

  “It may be noticed that the great artists always choose great fools rather than great intellectuals to embody humanity. Hamlet does express the aesthetic dreams and the bewilderment of the intellect; but Bottom the Weaver expresses them much better.

  “There is an apostolic injunction to suffer fools gladly. We always lay the stress on the word ‘suffer,’ and interpret the passage as one urging resignation. It might be better, perhaps, to lay the stress upon the word ‘gladly,’ and make our familiarity with fools a delight, and almost a dissipation.”†

  There is not such a world of difference between being a “potentate,” as Delteil urges, and being a great, a sublime fool. In a later work called Jesus II,‡ Delteil, writing with all the fire and enthusiasm of youth, plus the divine wisdom of the fool, gives us a profound and hilarious piece of writing, profound because it is so hilarious. It is something like the Sunday of Creation, this book, and the message it conveys is one which could only be given on the Seventh Day. In it Jesus the Second runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. “Sauve qui peut!” he screams as he gallops from one corner of the earth to another, warning of the imminent destruction which threatens. Toward the end, somewhere in the vague vicinity of Mt. Ararat, he runs into a rum, staid fellow, none other than old Adam himself. There ensues a delicious dialogue about the wicked ones, “they” who are responsible for all our ills. As this Jesus enumerates the great crimes being committed in the name of humanity (the book was written with the war fresh in mind), old Adam scoffingly says: “Pooh! Nada, supernada!” It is apparent that this Jesus is at the end of his rope, and what is worse, at the end of his wits. Old Adam has blandly dismissed all the horrors, all the crimes, all the atrocities with a—“Gestes que tout cela.… Jeux de mains, ombres chinoises, phénomenologie.”

  “The evil’s not there,” says old Adam, in a suave, secretive voice, a voice as “inouie” as the first almond blossom. “The evil is within.” It is not act but state, he explains. Being, and not doing. “Evil is in the soul!”

  There was a Biblical silence. One heard the centuries clicking away beyond the sky … then a salvo of machine-gun fire somewhere … military laughs, boots….

  “Each man for himself! Scram!” cries Jesus.

  “Child!” says the other…. “The earth is round…. ‘They’ are everywhere…. Even in the Garden of Eden.”

  Jesus is speechless.

  “So what!” says Adam. “I’ve been here, calm and tranquil, since the beginning…. Incognito, my son: that’s the great secret…. I’ve taken to the underground … the underground of the soul. (le maquis de l’âme).”

  When you put the book down you feel as if God’s own angels had made pipi in your hair. The raciness of the language, the exuberance of spirit, the hilarious blaphemy and obscenity, the reckless freedom of invention, give it a magical quality. Nobody is spared, nothing is left sacred. Yet the book is an act of pure reverence—reverence for life. When your stomach muscles cease twitching, when you have wiped the last tear away, you realize not that you have been made a fool of (which is what the critics would have you believe) but that you have just parted company with a fool of the first magnitude, a fool who scuttled your addled pate and, in lieu of wisdom, in lieu of salvation, took you for a ride “to laughter unending.”

  And this, if I possessed the gift, is what I would offer my young Canadian friend who passed his bleak youth in an even bleaker atmosphere but who is now, thank God, living a life of sin in that delightful city of vice and corruption, Paris. He has not yet taken his soul to the underground—but give him time! After the imaginary ailments come the real ailments. After inoculation, immunity. After immortality, eternity. After Jesus first, second, third and last, old Adam remains. Adam Cadmus. Aren’t the hollyhocks just glorious? And have you seen those Johnny-jump-ups? Why did you take that crucifix down from the wall? Put it back! Haven’t I said that every crucifixion worth the name is a rosy one? “Suave qui peut?” Poouah! Try this Liederkranz … it’s sublime….

  10.

  One of the subjects frequently discussed in these parts is discipline, the discipline which children should or should not be given. No subject, not even the atom bomb, can create more divergence of opinion, more conflict, between good neighbors. Pressed to the wall, every one will agree that the only discipline worth the name is self-discipline. But, and here’s where the fireworks commence—“children have to be taught how to behave!”

  How does one go about teaching children to behave? (Properly, of course.) Off-hand one would think that there was but one answer: by example. But anyone who has participated in such a discussion knows that this is the last thin line of defense. The power of example seems to be regarded as a minor technique in the strategy of daily warfare. It’s the reply of a saint, not of a harassed, bewildered parent or teacher. Somewhere in the course of an interminable argument you are sure to be informed that saints didn’t have children of their own, or that Jesus, who said, “Suffer the little ones to come unto me for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” might have spoken otherwise had he known what are called domestic problems. In other words, that Jesus was talking through his hat.

  The other day, getting my shoes shined, I had a most interesting conversation with the colored bootblack, William Greenwell. I always patronize the Reverend Greenwell because with the shoe-shine I receive a few gratuitous words of wisdom. My friend, who is a trustee of the Baptist Church and a lecturer and critic of Bible teachings, is probably well known in Monterey. One can’t help noticing his stand, which is in the hallway of a rooming house, because at the entrance there is always a pair of high boots from which calla lilies are sprouting.

  From morning till night the Reverend Greenwell is at his stand shining shoes. And always in the same attire: a shabby army coat and pants, a dingy apron, and a battered-looking fedora dating from the Civil War. No matter how the conversation starts, it’s sure to finish with the Bible. My friend knows his Bible. He quotes from it freely, and often at length, giving chapter and verse together with commentary and exegesis. In his mouth the words sound pungent and provocative, alive and immediate.

  The other day, as I took my place on the throne, he inquired after my boy, who usually wants a shoeshine too. That started the conversation. Youth! The Reverend Greenwell’s eyes lit up when he pronounced the word. He has four sons of his own, all grown men now, whom he had done his best “to raise the right way.” But it was the grandson, he remarked, who opened his eyes. This little fellow was different. He had a way of his own, and at times he presented a problem.

  He went on to say that this grandson had awakened his curiosity. Instead of correcting him, instead of pushing him around, he had set himself to study the boy’s ways and to discover, if possible, why he behaved as he did.

  “You can shout and threaten and punish all you like,” he observed, “but the truth is that each and every one of us is unique, has a nature all his own. It’s no use saying ‘Don’t do this,’ or ‘Don’t do that!’ Find out why it is he chooses to do this instead of that, or that instead of this. You can’t push people around, especially not little people. You can only guide them. And that’s an art! Yes sir!” He looked at me with a gleam in his eye.
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  “Now look at Nature. Nature has her own way of handling problems. When a man’s old, Nature takes him and she stretches him out in death. ‘You’re finished,’ she says. ‘Give the young ones a chance!’ The world belongs to the young, not the old. As soon as a man comes of age he hardens and stiffens. He rigidifies, that’s what. Nature never grows old. Nature stands for life, for growth, for flexibility, for experimentation. With Nature it’s all give and take. Nature is all one substance; she’s not at war with herself. We too are members of the one body.” He paused a moment and held his arm aloft. “Mutilate that and the whole body suffers!”

  Another pause to expectorate. He’s a tobacco-chewing man.

  “No, my friend, man is full of pride and conceit. Full of arrogance. Always wanting it his way, not God’s way. Look at the world! Look at these young people milling about—they’re all at sea. No one to tell them which way to go, which road to take. It’s all wrong from the start—I mean our system of education. We fill their minds with a lot of things that are of no use to them and we tell them nothing about the things they ought to know. We stuff them with false knowledge. We try to bend them and twist them to our way of thinking. We never teach them to think for themselves. We’re on their backs all the time. ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that! Not that way, this way!’ It’s no good, it won’t work. It’s not Nature’s way, or God’s.

  “Every child that’s born into the world has the power to open our eyes, to give us a new vision of life. And what do we do? Try to make him over, make him into our own image. And who are we? What are we? Are we models of wisdom and understanding? Because a man has wealth or fame, because he commands an army or has invented a new weapon of destruction, does that make him a better man than you or I? Does that make him a better father, a better teacher?