The Dialectical Result of a Literary Police Action
THE DIALECTICAL RESULT OF A LITERARY POLICE ACTION124 [XIII 432]
With a paper like The Corsair, which hitherto has been read by many and all kinds of people and essentially has enjoyed the recognition of being ignored, despised, and never answered, the only thing to be done in writing in order to express the literary, moral order of things—reflected in the inversion that this paper with meager competence and extreme effort has sought to bring about—was for someone praised and immortalized in this paper to make application to be abused by the same paper. I assume this was successful. The fact that the same Mr. Goldschmidt,125 who deserves honor for having published a good book126 (and in all events it is my wish that appreciation—sympathetic and abundant and encouraging—may come his way), makes money as editor of The Corsair does not alter the paper’s situation. On the other hand, the situation is esthetically favorable for what I otherwise would gladly renounce ethically here and now, the fulfillment of my old wish “always to have the laughter on my side,”127 the laughter of those who have a true sense of the comic, for to be abused on one’s own order is precisely that advantage, even though I took the step for the sake of others.128 So The Corsair can be hired to abuse just as a hand organ can be hired to make [XIII 433] music. Perhaps it has already been used that way more than once, but with the difference that someone in bitterness and spite, bringing irony upon his own head, has hired The Corsair to abuse someone else.
I cannot do any more for others than to request to be abused myself.129 The Corsair’s corrupt cleverness, along with its hidden helpers—producers and peddlers of pandering witticisms—must and should be ignored literarily just as public prostitutes should be ignored civically. As far as I am concerned, although I cannot be said to have done anything great, with that article I may be assumed to have made such a large contribution, as they say of charitable institutions, to The Corsair’s Demolition and Defamation Institute that it will feel duty-bound to exert itself to the utmost to fulfill its præstanda [obligation], perhaps for my whole life, or at least for a long time,130 until a new contribution is made necessary by a new insulting attack—that is, by once again being praised by The Corsair, a paper that gives to him who is praised only the trouble of having to read and of having to protest. I say for my whole life, or at least for a long time—unless The Corsair is ruined131 by the dialectic of one person’s order to be abused or of a number of such orders.
At least something similar happened to a tailor whose story I shall now tell. He lived in a market town and had a fair little livelihood (in that respect his case is different from The Corsair’s) altering old clothes and doing other similar work. The way things go in the world, one ought not challenge the gods with foolish wishes lest they mock one—not by denying the wish but by fulfilling it. So it went with the tailor. As he sat at his bench he often sighed to the gods, “Would that I might get many customers, still more orders, so that I might become rich, and then still more so that I might become very rich. When I have become very rich, I will buy myself a kingdom and quit my trade.” As he sat at his tailor’s bench one morning after fortifying his soul with this foolish morning prayer, what happens? Suddenly a messenger arrives from a prosperous man with a big business who is ordering new uniforms for all his workers. Sad to say, it was an order for new garments, [XIII 434] and the tailor only knew how to work with old clothes, alter and patch and so on. And yet this was his dream come true! What then? Well, it is a sad story and cannot be told without tears: indeed, they had to carry the tailor to bed, and he was never himself again. Maybe human beings would have punished the tailor for his foolish prayer by canceling his old orders, but the gods punished him ironically by fulfilling his wish. —So it is also when the person who carries on the contemptible trade of vilification perhaps time and again offends the gods with his prayer that his business may flourish, that there may always be more and more people to vilify, more and more active assistants of irascibility and spite on the paper, when in the work of his trade he indulges and enjoys himself in the delusion of impotence and bad temper—namely, that it is dreadful to be the object of his abuse—until he insanely goes so far as even to believe that others are living in the same delusion; and because he never gets an answer and always has the last word, he believes that people are afraid of him, just as in ordinary life no one is as sure to claim the right of way on the sidewalk as a public prostitute is. While he sits busy at work in his workshop, protected against legal punishment by a staff of street-corner loafers standing in for him,132 protected from literary polemic by the paper’s contemptibleness—then suddenly one day comes an order from a reputable man (but I am not sure of that), in any case, from one whom the vilifier himself has praised and immortalized133 (perhaps to be able to vilify others all the more by praising someone), an order to be vilified: this, then, is a new kind of work, involving a very special kind of dialectical problem. How did it go with the master tailor and the new work and the secret wish that was granted ironically? And vilifying is even more dialectical than simply being able to remodel old clothes. He whose praise the self-respecting person refuses to accept and honor—his vilifying becomes a matter of personal honor. He whose abuse and whose abortive witty attack no one has ever answered, whereas the first answer he got was a protest against his praise by the one he praised—his vilifying is shown by this response to immortalizing to be what silence about the attack judged it to be. Being afraid is dialectically different from patching together, because a man avoided by respectable literary figures does not have power but is impotent. Maybe the civil authorities would like to put him out of business by preventing him from vilifying in the paper. Irony encourages the business by asking to be [XIII 435] maligned; irony promotes the business by demanding to be abused. The civil authorities perhaps wanted to use force against the presumed Terrible One and yet made allowances for him. Irony calmly confronts the Terrible One—and thereby demonstrates that he is not terrifying.
The way is open, and as it says in the pseudonymous books:134 the method is changed. Anyone who is insulted by being praised by this paper—if he happens to find out about it—will protest if he so pleases and thereby confirm the judgment of decent literature upon The Corsair: it is to be permitted to continue its trade of attacking and vilifying at will, but if it has the nerve to praise, it must on this occasion encounter the brief protest: May I ask to be abused—the personal injury of being immortalized by The Corsair is just too much. The inconvenience will not be great, as if one now had to read The Corsair in order to see if one has been praised. Not at all. No doubt it will not happen frequently, and if one somehow does not find out about it, failing to protest is no great misfortune. Moreover, I do not doubt that the police superintendent, Councilor Reiersen,135 who as a matter of fact is obliged to take the trouble of reading the paper through, will, if asked, do the favor of briefly informing a person that he has been praised. The reply to be given is very brief, and I have in fact offered a formula suitable for use. The variations will come at the end, where, instead of “immortalized,” according to the factual circumstances the reply might read: “praised,” “recognized,” “admired,” “singled out for distinction,” “recommended,” “cited,” “shown to the place of honor,” etc.
FRATER TACITURNUS