exposing the absurdity of moral distinctions, and
blurring the supposedly clear lines demarcating
good and evil.
Upon examination, we see that a close con-
nection exists between the figure of the poet-fool
and Nash’s concern with ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘evil.’’ The
relationship is best understood by first consider-
ing William Willeford’s comparison of the fool
to a child’s toy known as ‘‘Stehaufma ̈nnchen’’ in
German or ‘‘little getup man,’’ and ‘‘a tumbler or
roly-poly’’ in English:
The toy, often painted to look like a clown, is
weighted at the bottom; when it is hit, it rolls
and bobs until it stands upright again. Neither
in its motionlessness, when it is upright, nor in
its failing to stand upright again is it for us an
image of a moral agent acting on behalf of the
‘‘good.’’ It is impressive, rather, for its detach-
ment from any moral conflict that we might try
to attribute to it with our imagination. The toy
is not in conflict with the ‘‘bad’’ person who hits
it. It simply reacts with simplicity and economy
according to inviolable physical laws and with-
out expending energy of its own. It can take
any number of blows; it has endless time to find
its upright position under a rain of them, and
the ‘‘bad’’ person cannot win against it, so that
the conflict between the two is illusory; its win-
ning does not make it ‘‘good.’’ Nor can we
imagine it being caught in an inner conflict,
since there is nothing in its mechanical con-
struction that hinders it from regaining its bal-
ance. Whether anything about it is ‘‘good’’ or
‘‘bad’’ depends entirely on the moral perspec-
tive in which it is regarded.
(Willeford 115)
Like the roly-poly that is neither good nor
bad, the poet-fool, occupies an ‘‘objective’’ posi-
tion, detached ‘‘from any moral conflict,’’ and thus
is able to comment, truthfully and objectively, on
the relativity of ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad.’’ From this
standpoint, the poet-fool typically exposes the rela-
tivity of moral values by holding up two incongru-
ous images representing the extremes on a moral
continuum and viewing them, as it were, from its
objective ‘‘point ofindifference,’’ orpunctum indif-
ferens. In ‘‘It Must Be the Milk,’’ for example,
Nash observes ‘‘how much infants resemble people
who have had too much to drink’’ by comparing
the way that infants and intoxicated people walk:
Yet when you see your little dumpling set
sail across the nursery floor,
Can you conscientiously deny the resemblance
to somebody who is leaving a tavern
after having tried to leave it a dozen times
and each time turned back for just one
more?Each step achieved
Is simply too good to be believed;
Foot somehow manages to stay put;
Arms wildly semaphore,
Wild eyes seem to ask, Whatever did we get
in such a dilemma for?
The similarity of toddlers and inebriates might
be dismissed as coincidental if the speaker did not
expose to view other likenesses which also serve to
erode the distinction between pure and impure:
Another kinship with topers is also by
infants exhibited,
Which is that they are completely uninhibited,
And they can’t talk straight.
Any more than they can walk straight;
In these images, the incongruous and humor-
ous pairing of ‘‘tots and sots’’ serves to blur the
moral distinction between innocence and sullied
experience. By suggesting a likeness between the
infant and the drunk, Nash means to point out
that good and evil are relative terms that depend-
ing on one’s moral perspective can be applied to
the same behavior, just as uncoordinated walking
may be perceived as reprehensible and adorable:
‘‘in inebriates it’s called staggerin’ but in infants
it’s called toddling.’’ Likewise, talking charact-
erized by ‘‘awful’’ pronunciation and ‘‘flawful’’
grammar may be perceieved from morally oppo-
site perspectives: ‘‘in adults, it’s drunken and
maudlin and deplorable, / But in infants it’s tun-
nin’ and adorable.’’
Nash’s pattern of observation exhibited here
is similar to the creative act that Arthur Koestler
terms ‘‘bisociation,’’ that is, ‘‘the perceiving of
a situation or idea...in twoself-consistent but
habitually incompatible frames of reference.’’
Here the idea, walking, is ‘‘bisociated’’ with
the two frames of reference—the child and the
drunk. As Koestler also remarks, ‘‘It is the clash
of the two mutually incompatible codes, or asso-
ciative contexts, which explodes the tension,’’
and so results in a comic effect (Koestler 35).
As we have seen in ‘‘It Must Be the Milk,’’
Nash typically pairs two incongruous elements to
blur the distinction between opposites, especially
objects representing moral extremes. In a similar
fashion, Nash pairs candy and liquor, in ‘‘Reflec-
tion on Ice-Breaking,’’ to comment on the relative
appropriateness of types of courtship behavior:
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.The Hippopotamus