Smear yourself, paint yourself, wear a fine shirt
Put a brave face on it, Yah!—you are dirt.”
“Now is that true?” asked Sargon of himself. Is that true? Dirt? What is dirt? But no! he must not wander off after this mad raving! What was it he had been thinking about? He had been asking why had the Power thrust him into this dreadful place? Why had the Power brought him to this place? If only the man would stop that improvisation of his for a little while it might be possible to think that out. Why had he been given over to the commands of Jordan and Higgs to live among the madmen and—sudden fantastic side question!—why had they?
If only that poem would cease! If only that voice would fade to silence! It was now mere rubble and rubbish, as though thought had been broken up with a pickaxe and loaded in carts and shot down a slope. Don’t listen to it, Sargon! Don’t listen to it! Concentrate!
In his endeavour to concentrate, Sargon forgot even Higgs. He sat up in bed and drew his knees nearly to his chin and thought.
He was Sargon; that was the great issue. He had to remain Sargon. He was probably in this place of trouble and torment because of the conflict between his being Sargon and the possibility of his relapsing into Preemby. The Power had called him to be Sargon and to serve and suffer for and at last to rule the Whole World, but manifestly it was not a simple direct call. There was something working in opposition to this destiny, an Anti-Power, opposed to the Power, which was trying to put him back to Preemby and Preembyism, to being little and insignificant, to living obscurely and to no purpose and so at last to dying and becoming utterly and finally dead. That Anti-Power it was that had been permitted to bring him here, to frighten and torment him, to din mad rhymes into his ears, to urge upon him in a monotonous persistent voice that he was dirt and that God was without a face, and a multitude of suchlike blasphemies. But they were not true. The Anti-Power might talk and talk—would God there could be a respite from his talking!—but the truth was outside this place and greater than this place and altogether comprehended it. He was one, Sargon was one, from the beginning in Sumeria, in many lands and now here, the same spirit, the ruler who serves; he was one just as London was one when it was seen from on high up above there, endlessly multitudinous yet drawn together into a single personality. And so was the whole world one. To be Preemby was to be like a wretched little back street house down below there, swallowed up in the general effect. Never more could he be Preemby, even if he would. That was what he had to keep hold of. He could only be Sargon by denying Preemby—even though he had to face the pains of death.
Yet all the while the Anti-Power was insulting life and himself through that disordered poet and his recitation. The man had now fallen under the spell of a fascinating but detestable word, if one may call such a thing a word, “Tra-la-la.”
“Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.
That is the note of it.
Get the full gloat of it.