Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

I did not know then that writers give away everything that is original to them, and are always in danger of losing their whole substance. Writers are people who have exhausted themselves; only the dregs of them still exist. Writing is so real it makes the writer unreal; a nothing. And if one resists being a nothing, one will have the greatest difficulty in finishing anything.

Nor did I know that in his hyperfastidious, shamelessly private mind, he was envisioning a nonexistent genre. For no one ever writes the book he imagines; the book becomes the death mask of creation, it has its own future and survives like a chicken dancing with its head cut off. And the spy knows this better than anyone; to write anything down is to take colossal risk. In life you can mask your actions, but once on paper, nothing can hide your mediocrity.

Da Historae Astingae

A TRAVELER’S GUIDE TO THE CROWNLANDS OF CANNONIA INCLUDING THE MARCHLANDS OF KLAVIER WITH DIGRESSIONS INTO FERRYLAND AND THE TRIBUTARIES OF THE MZE, VAH, AND ITS

WRITTEN BY AN ANONYMOUS PERMANENT RESIDENT OF THESE LANDS, BUT NOT ABOUT HIMSELF

Go, little book

and wish to all

Flowers in the garden

Meat in the hall,

A bin of wine

A spice of wit

A house with lawns

enclosing it.

A living river

by the door

A nightingale

in the sycamore

AS WE HAVE REFUSED ALL ADVERTISING, ANYONE

REPRESENTING THEMSELVES AS OUR AGENT IS AN IMPOSTOR.

So, Valued Traveler, while your papers are being visaed and your baggage searched, put aside your imaginings, your idle curiosity, and your fear of discomfort in a strange land. I came here like yourself many years ago as a young man, and while not completely accepted to this day, have become a resident, raised a family, invented a profession, and benefitted not a little from the local culture. I have surveyed every romantic scene, gathered every mountain flower, measured every valley, and drawn conclusions as to what was excellent and what might be improved.

It is the humble duty of this writer to collect under all the varieties of circumstance such materials as may supply a groundwork for connected history and for general deduction. The reader who seeks elaborate political disposition, or the amusement derived from private anecdote, will be disappointed. Where it was thought necessary to go beyond the sphere of personal observation, German authorities of established merit have been relied upon. It was at one time intended to subjoin a sketch of the literature of the country. But upon this interesting subject it is not possible to write with a hasty pen. Cannonian letters are too extensive to be compressed, and it was not without great reluctance the author relinquished this object, being sensible that the true spirit and condition of a nation can never be appreciated without some insight into the progress of its literary culture. He trusts, however, that the design which is deferred will not be forgotten, and anticipates with much pleasure those hours in which he may pursue his labors upon the subject.

The Traveler must look to other guides if he is interested in the minor promotions of Greek or Italian genius, or the ruins of military/ecclesiastical misadventures. There will be no chronological list of potentates. Indeed, Cannonia is a kingdom in which the person of the Sovereign has always been difficult to determine. The writer must further confess that he is not an artist of any sort, but an amateur enthusiast of the profound, the beautiful, and the sublime, so now increasingly out of fashion — nor does he confuse the authority of the aesthetical genius with the political ambitions which often encourage it, which seems to be our intelligensias’ only fascination. Nor am I anything of a philosopher. Dialectics do not interest me, though like ballsports, I am very good at them. I neither write a system nor promise a system, not do I subscribe or ascribe anything to a system. My only expertise is in the finality of love. I intend, nonetheless, to make my reputation good with you, as I have acquired, at no little expense, the Cannonian taste of seeing things for what they are.

By this time Father could do no wrong in the Professor’s eyes, the doctor seizing upon each success in the field with an enthusiasm tinged by self-deprecatory remarks about his own researches:

“It’s just as well we’re friends, otherwise I should burst with envy.” Or, “You really ought to write this up, you know. It would make a great impression on the masses.”

Moreover, Father’s indifference had the odd effect of cheering him.

“It’s merely an amateur’s business,” Father sniffed, “and at any rate, I don’t live to publish my brain.”

One day, when the Professor was waxing particularly effusive about a schnauzer whose mania for shredding had been softened measurably, he blurted out, “Let’s leave off the uglies, Councilor. You realize in all this time you haven’t really shown off your own animals. I want to see good dogs today, the best dogs — the emblem I should aspire to!”

Father took off his hat, lowered his head, and looked directly at his esteemed friend’s heart, as if to gauge his sincerity. Then he took a step backward and looked him up and down.

“Very well,” he spoke in measured tones, “but you deserve nothing less than the whole play. And it’s spring, you know. Man isn’t up to any good, and neither is nature.”

The difference between them, after all, was that the Professor truly believed he was the first mortal to set foot into the mind, and like every true colonial assumed that mere priority allowed him to name it and submit it to his laws. My father, who had preceded him there and left as rapidly as he could, knew with his layman’s tick that what you give your name to only makes you liable for its eventual perversions, and that while the ferns of the world may give way around your stride, they immediately pop back up, covering your tracks as though you never passed. Father also, in retrospect, had made an elemental mistake, not realizing that the exercise of personal modesty, which had won my mother, does not often work as well with men, for modesty in men is simply inverted pride. The Professor was not content with intimacy, but only unreserved mutual admiration, and my father believed that he could wean him from this course.

It was in this spirit that Felix summoned Rubato and Nimbus, models of the Chetvorah, parented by Sirius and Isisirene, the brightest constellation yet projected on the dome of dogdom. Brother and sister, they could hardly be distinguished from one another at two years of age, save for Rubato’s gallant poise, which made him the better pointer, and the passionate devotion of Nimbus, which made her an indefatigable retriever.

Returning the schnauzer to the kennels, we walked around to the rear of the house and down the lawn to Cherith’s Brook. Father turned on his heel, gazing back to the tower of his den, and blew two syllables on a silver whistle, a bass and a deeper quartertone, the second phrase of Schubert’s Unfinished . Immediately the pair appeared on the den’s balcony (as usual, they had flung themselves with a sob under his desk upon his departure), and then with tempered passion they flashed across the southern sky, turning extraordinary caprioles in the air. Emerging from a circular pool behind a cypress hedge, then bolting through the broken garden gate, they stormed toward us, unfolding their forces as their wet ribcages realigned with each stride — flews loose, underlips shortened, teeth gleaming in the sun.

The Professor’s heart had dropped when they leapt, fearing the worst, and now it did again as their clear-veined legs and drawn-in haunches seemed to promise more than virile virtue, bringing back the awe and helplessness he had felt at the Cossack-like charge of the Astingi boy on his pony.