Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  The interviewer pledged his life, his sacred fortune and his honor to the performance of that duty, and the great man resumed:

  “Of all these inhibiting censores literarum, the most austere and implacable are those guarding the sovereignty of Poe. They have made his area of activity a veritable mare clausam — as if he were the first that ever burst

  Into that silent sea.

  The Timorous Reporter signified his sense of the speaker’s fertility of metaphor: there had been an inundation (of words) and the “estate” had become a “sea.” He whistled softly “A Life on the Ocean Wave.”

  “It was not an unknown sea; it was crisscrossed by the wakes of a thousand ships and charted to the last reef. Tales of the tragic and the supernatural are the earliest utterances in every literature. When the savage begins to talk he begins to tell wonder tales of death and mystery — of terror and the occult. Tapping, as they do, two of the three great mother-lodes of human interest, these tales are a constant phenomenon — the most permanent, because the most fascinating, element in letters. Great Scott! has the patrol never heard of The Thousand and One Nights, of The Three Spaniards, of Horace Walpole, of ‘Monk’ Lewis, of De Quincey, of Maturin, Ingemann, Blicher, Balzac, Hoffmann, Fitz James O’Brien?”

  The reporter summoned the boldness to say that the charge of imitation had not been made against De Maupassant, who certainly was not an unobserved “little fellow,” and was contemporary with the offending critics. “Why, sir,” said the Melancholy Author, “you forget — he wrote in French. Translations? Dear me, have there been translations? How sad!

  “As to ‘originality,’ that is merely a matter of manner. The ancients exhausted the possibilities of method. In respect of that, one cannot hope to do much that is both new and worth doing, but there are as many styles = — that is, ways of doing — as writers. One can no more help having some individuality in manner than one can help looking somewhat different from anybody else, although hopeless of being much of a giant, or unique as to number and distribution of arms, legs and head. But, sir, this demand for ‘originality’ is a call for third-rate men, who alone supply such a semblance of it as is still possible. The writer of sane understanding and wholesome ambition is content to meet his great predecessors on their own ground. He enters the public stadium, and although perversely handicapped because of his no record and mocked by the claque; and although the spectators are sure to declare him beaten, that ultimate umpire, Posterity, will figure the matter out, and may announce a different result.”

  The reporter has reason to think that much more was said, but He Had the misfortune to fall asleep; and when wakened by the sound of a closing door he was alone. “My!” he said; “I have Had a narrow escape; if the man that once proclaimed me a genius had not happened to be a fool I know not what evils might have befallen me,”

  1909.

  OUR SACROSANCT ORTHOGRAPHY

  “NO,” said the Melancholy Author, “I do not understand British criticism of American attempts at spelling reform. The claim of our insular cousins to a special ownership and particular custody of our language is impudent. English is not a benefaction that we owe to living Englishmen, nor a loan to be enjoyed, under conditions prescribed by the creditors. When our ancestors ‘came over’ they did not sign away any rights of revision of their own speech; and if a man come not honestly by his mother-tongue I know not what he may be said legitimately to own. I am not addicted to intemperate words, and harsh retaliation does not engage my assent, but when I see an Englishman reaching ‘ hands across the sea’ to punish what he chooses to call an infraction of the laws of his language, I am tempted to slap his wrist.” In the presence of this portentous incarnation of justice the Timorous Reporter trembled appropriately and was silent in all the dialects of his native land and Kansas.

  “What would they have,” continued the great, sad man—”these ‘conservatives’? A language immune to change? That would be a dead language and we should have to evolve a successor. Ours has never been a changeless tongue; nothing is more mutable, even in its orthography. As it existed a few centuries ago it is now unintelligible except to a few specialists, yet every change has encountered as fierce hostility as any that is now proposed. Compare a page of ‘ Beowulf’ with a page of the London Times or The Spectator and see what incalculable quantities of ‘crow’ the luckless ‘guardians of our noble tongue’ have had to swallow. Do you wonder, young man, that they are a dyspeptic folk? And did not Dr. Samuel Johnson formulate a great truth in the dictum that * every sick man is a scoundrel’?”

  “Surely,” ventured the Timorous Reporter, “you would not apply so harsh a word to the great English reviewers, nor to our own beloved Professor Harry Thurston Peck!”

  “To be consistent these gentlemen should not demand that the spelling remain as it is, for its present condition is the result of innumerable defeats of themselves and their predecessors by hardy ‘corruptors.’ It is pusillanimous of them not only to accept a situation that has been forced upon them but to proclaim it sacred and fight for its eternal maintenance. They should be making heroic efforts to restore at least the spelling of Hakluyt and Sir John Mandeville. It is not so very long since a few timid innovators began (as secretly as the nature of the rebellious act would permit) to leave off the ‘k’ in such words as ‘musick” publick’ and so forth. Instantly

  The wonted roar was up amid the woods,

  And filled the air with barbarous dissonance —

  the self-appointed ‘guardians of our noble tongue’ rose as one old lady and swore that rather than submit they would run away! That sacred ‘k’ is no more, but they are with us yet, untaught by failure and unstilled by shame. It is the nature of a fool to hate a thing when it is new, adore it when it is current, and despise it when it is obsolete.” Pleased with his epigram, the Melancholy Author so accentuated the sadness of his countenance as to invite a sincere compassion.

  “We hear much from the scholar-folk about the importance of preserving the derivation of words, not only as a guide to their meaning, but because from the genealogy and biography of words we get instructive sidelights on the history and customs of nations. That is all true: philology is a useful and fascinating study. Read The Queen’s English of the late Dean Alford if you think it is not. (Incidentally, I may mention my own humble volumes on The Genesis and Evolution of ‘Puss’ as the Vocative Form of ‘Cat.’) But derivation is really not a very sure guide to signification. For example, what do I learn of the meaning of ‘ desultory’ by knowing that it is from the Latin ‘desultor,’ a circus performer that leaps from horse to horse? In many instances the origin of a word is misleading, as in ‘miscreant,’ which, etymologically, means nothing worse than “unbeliever.’ Of course it is interesting to hear in it a lingering echo of an ecclesiastic damning in a time when nothing worse than an unbeliever was thought to exist.

  “But, as the late Prof. Scheie de Vere pointed out, the roots of words are better disclosed in their sound than in their spelling. By phonetic spelling only can their pronunciation be made nearly uniform — if that is an advantage. If this is not obvious, human intelligence is a shut clam.”

  The creator of this beautiful figure celebrated it at the sideboard and resumed his illuminating discourse.

  “To those who deem it worth while to be happy, the study of derivations is, indeed, a perpetual banquet of delights, but it is important to remember that language is not merely, nor chiefly, a plaything for scholars, but a thing of utility in the conduct of life and affairs. To its service in that character all obstruent considerations should, and eventually do, give way. It may please, and to some extent profit, to know that ‘ phthisis’ comes from the Greek ‘phthio’ — to waste away — but if in order that one may see this, as well as hear it, I must so spell it as to deny to certain letters of the alphabet their customary and established powers I protest against the desecration. Our orthography has no greater sanctity than have the vested rights of the vow
els and consonants by which we achieve it. Why do not’ the whiskered pandours and the fierce hussars’ of conservatism stand forth as champions of that noble Roman, the English alphabet?

  “Yes, I concede the importance of being able to trace the origin of words, for words are thoughts, and their history is a record of intellectual progress, but in very few of them would a simplified, even a consistently phonetic, spelling tend to obscure the trail by which they came into the language. And as to these few, why not learn their origin from the dictionaries once for all and have done with it? The labor would be incomparably less than that of learning to spell as we do.”

  Impressed but not silenced, the thirsty soul at the fountain of wisdom cautiously advanced the view that the reformed spelling is uncouth to the eye.

  “It is most dispiriting,” said the oracle, in the low, sad tones that served to distinguish him from the bagpipes of Skibo castle, “to hear from the beardless lips of youth a folly so appropriate to age and experience. To the unobservant, any change in the familiar looks disagreeable. The newest fashion in silk hats looks ridiculous; a little later the old style looks worse. To me nothing is uncouth: the most refined and elevated sentiment loses nothing by its expression in as nearly phonetic spelling as our inadequate alphabet will permit. For my reading you may spell like Josh Billings if you will not write like him.”

  “From all that you have been kind enough to say,” said the Timorous Reporter, with a sudden access of courage that alarmed him, “I infer that in your forthcoming great work, The Tyrant Preposition, you will employ the Skibonese philanthropography.”

  “Not I. Courage is an excellent thing in man: the soldier is useful; but each to his trade. Mine, sir,” he concluded, with a note of pride underrunning the grave, sweet monotony of his discourse, “is writing.”

  THE AUTHOR AS AN OPPORTUNITY

  “TO the literary man,” said the Melancholy Author, “life is not all ‘beer and skittles’by much. He is in a peculiar sense the custodian of troubles; of His own.’ Of these, one of the most insupportable grows out of the fact that almost every man, woman or child thinks himself, herself or itself an expert in literature, and the literary man a; Heaven-sent Opportunity. No Hawk ever watched a plump pullet detaching itself from the flock, with a more possessing delight than burns in the bosom of the average human being when a defenceless author; swims into his ken.’ Lord, Lord, with what alacrity He swoops down upon the incautious wight and holds him with his glittering eye to ‘talk books’ at him!

  “He knows it all, the good assailant — knows all about books, particularly ‘ the English classics’ and the newest novel. This knowledge — consisting, at the best, in whatever is current in popular criticism of the newspaper and magazine sort — he has quite persuaded himself is knowledge of Literature. It never occurs to the good creature that books are not literature; that he might have read every book in the world yet know no more of literature than a horned toad. Naturally, you do not care to explain to him that literature is an art — the art of which books are merely a result. He sees the result, but of the art behind them he knows not even so much as its existence.

  “He thinks that good writing is done as naturally, instinctively and with as little training as a bird sings in a tree, or a pig in a gate. He would be willing to admit that good painting cannot be done, good music executed, a good plea made in court, or good medical attendance given to the sick, without a deal of hard study of principles and methods. But writing — why, writing is merely setting down what you think; everybody writes.

  “Even the literary critic — may hornets afflict him! — cannot be intelligently objectionable without a technical knowledge of his business. A great poet has said:

  A man must serve his time at every trade,

  Save censure; critics all are ready made.

  “And ‘censure’ here, you will have the goodness to observe, means not condemnation, as in our common speech, but the passing of judgment of any kind on the work of another.

  “Suppose you were a famous electrician, and all other persons, eager to show you that they, too, know a thing or two and solemnly persuaded of the necessity of regaling you with scraps from your own table, should gravely define electricity as a ‘ mysterious force,’ express to you the belief that it is destined to ‘revolutionize the world’ and declare their admiration of Benjamin Franklin’s gigantic achievement in drawing it from a cloud. Suppose you could turn away from one tormentor only to fall into the hands of another and another, all uttering the same infantile babble — the same shallow platitudes, the same false judgment. That would be no more than we authors have to endure, and smile in the endurance. Nay, not so much, for not only do we have to suffer all this talk of the ‘shop’ — our shop — with all its irritating idiocy, but if we open our mouths to say something worth while, God help us! — we’ve a ‘fight’ on hand forthwith. For it is of the nature of ignorance to be disputatious, contentious, cantankerous. The more a man does not know, the more aggressive his manner of not knowing it. Venture to rack one of his ugly literary idols by so much as the breadth of a finger and — !”

  Unable to suppress his emotion, the Melancholy Author rose and strode three paces toward an open door, then turned and, striding back again, dropped into his seat and tried to look unconcerned.

  “The very persons who seek your society because they honestly admire your intellect will resent every manifestation of it. Whatever they do not understand, whatever is unfamiliar to them, is bad — false and immoral and insincere. Why, I remember a woman who came four hundred miles to see me — to sit at my feet, she was kind enough to say, and partake of my wisdom. In less than ten minutes she was angrily affirming the unworth of my opinions and attempting to inoculate me with her own. What did I do? My friend, what could I do, but wait until the storm had subsided and then express my admiration of the pink bow that she wore at her throat. Alas, I had sailed into a zone of storms, for it was cherry, and away went she!

  “Now, I am willing to talk of literature — it is one of the delights of my life to do so. I am even willing to talk books.’ But it must be with my equals, or with those who show some sense of the fact that a lifetime passed in the study of my art, and in its practice counts for something. Few things are more agreeable than imparting knowledge to those who in good faith and decent humility seek it; and such there are. I know some of them, and in their service find enough to do to keep me awake nearly all day. But the other sort: readers of brand-new books and reviews thereof; persons who think the ancients were barbarians; philosophers by birth and critics by inspiration who know it all without having learned any part of it — may Heaven,” concluded the Melancholy Author, with a fine flourish of his right hand, “bestow them as friends upon my enemies.”

  ON POSTHUMOUS RENOWN

  “NO,” said the Melancholy Author, “I do not expect my name to be shouted in brass on the frieze of Miss Helen Gould’s ‘ Temple of Fame.’”

  The Timorous Reporter ventured to inquire if that was because he had the misfortune to be alive.

  “That is a disqualification that time will remove,” answered the Melancholy Author. “The ground of my hope is different: I shall cause to be inscribed upon my tombstone the lines following:

  Good friends, for Jesus’ sake forbear

  To grieve the soul that’s gone to — where?

  Blest be the man that spares my fame,

  And curst be he that flaunts nay name!

  “The lines are admirable and extremely original,” said the Timorous Reporter. “May I ask if your reluctance to have your name emblazoned in the Temple is due to disesteem of the methods and results of selection, or to that innate modesty which serves to distinguish you from the violet?”

  “To neither. It is due to my consciousness of the futility of all attempts to perpetuate an individual fame. When I die my fame will die with me. It is mine no longer than I live to bear it. When there is no nominative there can be no possessive.

/>   “For illustration, you speak of Shakspeare’s fame. But there is no Shakspeare. The fame that you speak of is not ‘his’; it is ours — yours, mine and John Smith’s. To call it his’ — why, sir, that is as if one should concede the ownership of property to a vacuum. The dead are poor — they have nothing. Our mental confusion in this matter is no doubt largely due to our imperfect grammar: we have not enough cases in our declension; or, rather, there are not enough names for the cases that we have. In the phrase ‘ a horse’s tail’ we say rightly that ‘ horse’s’ is in the possessive case: the animal really possesses — owns — the tail. But in the phrase ‘a horse’s price’ there is no possessive, for the horse does not own the price: there should be another name for the case. When dead, the horse does not own even the tail. It is the same with ‘Shakspeare’s fame’: while he lived the phrase contained a possessive case; now it is something different — merely what the Latin calls a genitive. Our name for it misleads the unenlightened and makes them think of a dead man as owning things. One of my ambitions, I may add, is to bring English grammar into conformity with fact, promoting thereby every moral, intellectual and material interest of the race!”