RENÉ DAUMALWatch out, the indefinite thread of centuries is complete in this pearl which is
my face and my end.
—mary ann caws
Poetry and Thought
A magician was in the habit of amusing his public with the following little
trick. Having well aired the room and closed the windows, he would lean over a
large mahogany table and carefully pronounce the world ‘‘fly.’’ And immediately
a fly would be trotting about in the middle of the table, testing the polish with its
soft little proboscis and rubbing its front legs together like any natural fly. Then
the magician would lean over the table again, and once again pronounce the
word ‘‘fly.’’ And the insect would fall flat on its back, as if struck by lightning.
Looking at the corpse through a magnifying glass, one could see only a dry and
empty carcass, no innards, no life, no light in the facetted eyes. The magician
would then look at his guests with a modest smile, seeking compliments which
were duly paid him.
I have always thought this was a pretty pathetic trick. Where did it lead? At the
beginning there was nothing, and at the end there was the corpse of a fly. Such
progress. And one still had to get rid of the corpses—although there was an aging
lady admirer of the magician who collected them, whenever she could pick them
up unnoticed. It disproved the rule: where there’s two there’s always three. One
expected a third utterance of the word ‘‘fly’’ which would have made the insect’s
corpse disappear without a trace; in that way things would have been the same at
the end as they were at the beginning, except in our memories, which are quite
cluttered enough without that.
I must add that he was a fairly mediocre magician, a failure who, having tried
his hand at poetry and philosophy without much luck, transferred his ambitions
to the art of wonders; and even there he didn’t really come up to scratch.
michael wood