VII
It did not take me more than six weeks to give my first work to the world. It was, as I had promised myself, a poem in forty-eight cantos. True there were some negligences in it owing to the prodigious fecundity with which I had written it; but I reckoned that the public of to-day, accustomed as it is to the elegant literature at the foot of the newspapers, would not reproach me with them.
I had a success worthy of myself, that is to say, without its like. The subject of my work was nothing else than myself: in this respect I conformed to the height of fashion of our day. I related my past sufferings with a charming fatuity; I informed the reader of a thousand domestic details of the most piquant interest; the description of my mother’s bowl filled no less than fourteen cantos: I counted its grooves, its holes, its lumps, its chips, its splinters, its nails, its stains, its different colours, its reflections; I showed its inside, its outside, its edges, its bottom, its sides, its inclined planes and its level planes; passing to its contents, I gave studies of the tufts of grass, the straws, the dried leaves, the little scraps of wood, the pebbles, the drops of water, the remains of flies, the broken cockchafers’ legs, which were to be found there; it was a ravishing description. But do not imagine that I had it printed all in a piece; there are impertinent readers who would have skipped it. I had cleverly cut it into pieces, and worked it into the narrative in such a fashion that none of it was lost; so that at the most interesting and most dramatic moment, all of a sudden there came fifteen pages of bowl. There, in my opinion, is one of the great secrets of the art, and, as there is not the least trace of avarice about me, any one who likes may profit by it.
All Europe was in a stir at the appearance of my book; it devoured the intimate revelations which I condescended to communicate to it. How could it have been otherwise? Not only did I enumerate all the facts relative to my person, but I also gave the public a complete picture of all the moonshine that I had passed through my head since the age of two months; I had even intercalated, in the best place, an ode composed by me in the egg. At the same time, it is needless to say that I did not neglect, in passing, to discuss the great subject which is occupying the world so much nowadays, to wit, the future of the human race. This problem had struck me as interesting; in a leisure moment I had sketched a solution of it, which passed generally for satisfying.
Every day people sent me compliments in verse, letters of congratulation, and anonymous declarations of love. As for visits, I adhered rigorously to the plan which I had traced for myself; my door was shut to every one. Still, I could not debar myself from seeing two strangers who announced themselves as relations of mine. One was a blackbird from Senegal, and the other a blackbird from China.
“Ah, sir!” they said to me, embracing me like to choke me, “what a great blackbird you are! How well you have depicted, in your immortal poem, the deep-seated suffering of misunderstood genius! If we were not as unappreciated as possible already, we should become so after having read you. How we sympathize with your griefs, with your sublime contempt of the vulgar. We also, sir, we know from our own experience the secret pains which you have sung! Here are two sonnets which we have composed, such as they are, and which we beg you to accept.”
“Here also,” said the Chinese, “is some music which my wife has composed on a passage in your preface. It expresses the author’s intention most wonderfully.”
“Gentlemen,” I said to them, “so far as I can judge, you appear to me to be endowed with a great heart and an enlightened mind. But excuse me asking you a question. Whence proceeds your melancholy?”
“Why, sir,” replied the inhabitant of Senegal, “look how I am built. My plumage, it is true, is pleasant to look at, and I am clad in that handsome green colour which is seen shining on ducks; but my beak is too short and my foot too large; and see what a tail I am rigged out with! The length of my body does not make two-thirds of it. Is that not reason enough to wish oneself dead and done with?”
“And as for me, sir,” said the Chinese, “my misfortune is even more distressing. My brother’s tail sweeps the streets; but the street-boys point their finger at me because I have no tail at all.”
“Gentlemen,” I replied, “I pity you with all my soul; it is always annoying to have too much or too little of anything, no matter what it is. But permit me to tell you that in the Zoological Gardens there are several persons who resemble you, and who have stayed there a long time very peaceably, stuffed. Just as it is not enough for a woman author to cast aside all modesty in order to write a good book, no more is it enough for a blackbird to be discontented in order to have genius. I am the only one of my kind; and I grieve over the fact; perhaps I am wrong, but I am within my rights. I am white, gentlemen; become the same, and we’ll see what you’ll be able to say.”