06.13.07
Don Marquis
Don Marquis…
May he not be erringly confused with the Marquis de Sade… Don’s surname is pronounced MAR-kwiss, not Mar-KEE. Don himself said it’s so.
Don Marquis… is an intellectually groovy man whom Franz introduced me to. (Thank you, Franz… though they be six feet under, through literature you have acquainted me with wonderful people.)
Here are some of the serious topics disguised in witty verses that make him stirring, grin-and-nod-inducing, and just philosophically marvelous.
“The humorist is a philosopher who breaks the sad news gently because he is so sorry for the world.”
Aren’t the Russians Marvelous People!
By Don Marquis, in “Hermione and Her Little Group
of Serious Thinkers,” 1916
We’re been taking up Diaghileff in a serious way–our little group, you know-and really, he’s wonderful!
Who else but Diaghileff could give those lovely Russians things the proper accent?
And accent–if you know what I mean-accent is everything!
Accent! Accent! What would art be without accent?
Accent is coming in–if you get what I mean –and what they call “punch” is going out. I always thought it was a frightfully vulgar sort of thing, anyhow–punch!
The thing I love about the Russians is their Orientalism.
You know there’s an old saying that if you find a Russian you catch a Tartar…or something like that.
I’m sure that is wrong… I get so mixed on quotations. But I always know where I can find them, if you know what I mean.
But the Russian verve isn’t Oriental, is it?
Don’t you just dote on verve?
That’s what makes Bakst so fascinating, don’t you think?–his verve!
Though they do say that the Russian operas don’t analyze as well as the German or Italian ones–if you get what I mean.
Though for that matter, who analyzes them?
One may not know how to analyze an operate, and yet one may know what one likes!
I suppose there will be a frightful lot of imitations of Russian music
and ballet now. Don’t you just hate imitators?
One finds it everywhere–imitation! It’s the sincerest flattery, they say. But that doesn’t excuse it, do you think?
There’s a girl–one of my friends, she says she is–who is trying to imitate me. My expressions, you know, and the way I walk and talk, and all that sort of thing.
She gets some of my superficial mannerisms… but she can’t quite do my things as if they were her own, you know… there is where the accent comes in again!
Thoughts on Heredity and Things
By Don Marquis, in “Hermione and Her Little Group
of Serious Thinkers,” 1916
Isn’t Heredity wonderful, though!
We’ve been going into it rather deeply–My little Group of Serious, you know.
And, really, when you get into it, it’s quite complicated. All about
Homozygotes and Heterozygotes, you know.
The Homozygotes are–well, you might call them the aristocrats, you know; thoroughbreds.
And the Heterozygotes are the hybrids.
Only, of course, they don’t need to be goats at all.
Not but what they could be goats, you know, just as easily as horses or cows or human beings.
But whether goats or humans, don’t you think the great lesson of Heredity is that Blood will Tell?
Really the farther I go into Philosophy and Science and such things the more clearly I see what a fund of truth there is in the old simple proverbs!
People used to find out great truths by Instinct, you know; and now they use Research–vaccinate guinea pigs, you know, and all that sort of
thing.
Instinct! Isn’t Instinct wonderful!
And Intuition, too!
You know, I have the most remarkable intuition at times! Have I ever told you that I’m frightfully psychic?
Mr. Finch, the poet–you know Fothergil Finch, don’t you?–he writes
vers libre and poetry both–Mr. Finch said to me the other evening, “You are extremely psychic!”
“How did you know it?” I asked him.
“Ah!” he said, “how does one know these things?”
And how true that is, when you come to think it over! How does one know?
He has the great magnetic eyes! I could feel them drawing my thoughts from me as we talked.
“You have a Secret,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. And to myself I added, “Alas!”
“Your secret is,” he said, “that there is a difference between you and the other girls.”
It was positively uncanny! I’ve felt that for years! But no one else had ever suspected it before.
“Mr. Finch,” I said, “I must have told you that–or else it was just a wild guess. You couldn’t have gotten it psychically. How did you know it?”
“One knows these things,” he said–a trifle sadly, I thought. “They come to one–out of the Silences; one knows not how. It is better not to ask how! It is better not to question! It is better to accept! Do you not feel it so?
Sometimes I think that Fothergil Finch is the only man who has ever understood me.
You see, I am Dual in my personality.
There is the real Ego, and there is the Alter Ego.
And, besides these, I have so many moods which do not come from either one of my Egos! They come from my Subliminal Consciousness!
Isn’t the Subliminal Consciousness wonderful; simply wonderful?
How Suffering Purifies One
By Don Marquis, in “Hermione and Her Little Group
of Serious Thinkers,” 1916
Oh, to go through fire and come out purified! Suffering is wonderful, isn’t it? Simply wonderful!
The loveliest man talked to us the other night–to our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know–about social ideals and suffering.
The reason so many attempts to improve things fail, you know, is because the people who try them out haven’t suffered personally.
He had the loveliest eyes, this man.
He made me thin. I said to myself, “After all, have I suffered? Have I been purified by fire?”
And I decided that I had–that is spiritually, you know.
The suffering–the spiritual suffering–that I undergo through being misunderstood is something frightful!
Mamma discourages every Cause I take up. So does Papa.
I get no sympathy in my devotion to my ideals. Only opposition!
And from a child I have had such a high-strung, sensitive nervous organization that opposition of any sort has made me ill.
There are some temperaments like that.
Once when I was quite small and Mamma threatened to spank me, I had
convulsions.
And nothing but opposition, opposition, opposition now!
Only we advanced thinkers know what it is to suffer! To go through fire for our ideals!
And what is physical suffering by the side of spiritual suffering?
I so often think of that when I am engaged in sociological work. Only the other night–it was raining and chilly, you know–some of us went down in the auto to one of the missions and looked at the sufferers who were being cared for.
And the thought came to me all of a sudden: “Yes, physical suffering may be relieved–but what is there to relieve spiritual suffering like mine?”
Though, of course, it improves one.
I think it is beginning to show in my eyes.
I looked at them for nearly two hours in the mirror last evening, trying to be quite certain.
And, you know, there’s a kind of look in them that’s never been there until recently. A kind of a–a—-
Well, it’s an intangible look, if you get what I mean.
Not exactly a hungry look, more of a yearning look!
Thank heaven, though, I can control it–one should always be captain of one’s soul, shouldn’t one?
I hide it at times. Because one must hide one’s suffering from the world, mustn’t one?
But at other times I let it show.
And, really, with practice, I think I am going to manage it so that
I can turn it off and on-if you get what I mean–almost at will.
Because, you know, in certain costumes that look will be quite unbecoming.
Quite out of Harmony. And Inner Beauty only comes through Inner Harmony, doesn’t it?
Harmony! Harmony! Oh, to be in accord with the Infinite!
Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself, “Have I vibrated in tune with the Infinite today, or have I failed?”
strangefits said,
July 13, 2007 at 11:35 am
Thoughts on heredity and things seem strangely familiar.I felt like I had my head drilled open.
miRacLe said,
July 13, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I feel that too sometimes, Chelle… for me, the oddest familiarity you’ll encounter is whenever an author’s lines seem familiar plainly because he was able to expound what has been on your mind for so long.