|
And these days are described in the same poem as “A blue and gold mistake.” Not my poetry.
These are the days when the kids come back, not “a very few,” aslew—(You know what “slew” means? That’s old slang, isn’t it? That’s gone out of date.)—to take aforwardlook; come back to college.
And I always think they may be like me. They come back to show what they can do—dying to show what they can do in football—or dying to tell something they’ve thought of all summer or during the summer—something that’s happened to ’em or something that’s occurred ’em. […]
Now, I always come back with something—however unrelated to the situation. I come back with something just from sheer desire to tell it.
I’d like to connect it with you this way. I think so many of you are like people that are just going somewhere socially or spatially, and you don’t think its worth thinking about where you are. You know, we’re just about to go into space, or we’re just about to become communists or socialists or something, and what’s the use of paying any attention to this.
That don’t mean about school, but just about life in general. There’s a certain restlessness, of somebody that’s all dressed up to go somewhere and nowhere to go.
Two things I thought of this summer, among many others, that I’m dying to tell somebody—anybody I can catch—have to do with that.
You want to know the most conservative thing in the world? (You see, you hear about conservatism and radicalism.) Do you want to know the most radical thing in the world? I’ll tell you. I’ve just thought of ’em.
The most conservative thing in the world is that in birth like produces like. Human beings don’t have animals for children; they have human beings. That’s the most conservative thing of all, that that goes on. Then, the most radical thing in the world is a certain dissatisfaction with that fact.
And I’m going to tell you more about that. I’m an “evolutionary man,” as Mr. Julian Huxley calls him. I amThe—The—evolutionary man. (You see, with a capital“The.”) I know all about it—just as much as he knows. He’s in the business, and I’m just an amateur.
But put this this way. He would be sure that that dissatisfaction meant that we were going to be supermen right away. I’m very uncertain about that.
The dissatisfaction is a certain restlessness, in the humanbeing, that has brought us to where we are. It’s in nature—that restless in nature—as if some sort of force was chafing at the bit, you know, to get on. And it’s moving in us. […]
We should so conduct ourselves as evolutionary men, you’d think, that it will be a shorter distance from us to superman than it was from monkeys to us. Think that over.
But I warn you—(This is the way I’m going to close this thought.)—I warn you that this restlessness in us may be a dead-end thing. It may have brought us to here and will never carry us any further.
I suspect it’s a dead-end thing. We’re not going any further, except in civilization. We aren’t going to have any more legs than we’ve got or any more heads than we’ve got—or tails, either. ’Tisn’t going to be different. Nobody knows, you know; but I’m warning you.
They seem not to have thought of that, my contemporaries, that this restlessness that I have such a respect for—that makes us feel all the time a dissatisfaction (What they like to call a “divine dissatisfaction”—something divine in it; it may be divine.)—it brought us to where we are, but it’s a dead-end. It’s not going to carry us any further.
On the evolutionary tree—the of life—it’s some other branch may go somewhere. We’re not going any further—except in civilization. That’s another thing; that’s not in evolution at all—civilization.
All right, that’s that. Then, one thing more I thought of that I want to tell you.
I keep coming onto the feeling that—(This same “divine dissatisfaction” if you want to call it.) that this isn’t much of a country. Very widespread, that sort of criticism that’s going on in all our literature and in all the talk.
And I thought of this summer, that maybe we don’t knowhow good we are. But I tell you who does know how good we are, the Russians. They look in our direction every time they speak, just as you do in company with the most important person present. That’s the other one.
Now, I started with Emily Dickinson about this. (That was down the street, she used to live; downstreet here.) This restlessness, it’s wrought there. And it has to do with our originality in our civilization and on the football field and everywhere.
You know, I’m always sorry that the new ideas of football aren’t the boys’ so much as the coaches’. I think that’s rather sad. I like to think the boys are original. And I like to think that the originality is everywhere.
The thing I crave the most is to feel that all over the educational world everybody has got something on his mind he’s crazy to tell me if he gets a chance, just the same as I’m crazy to tell you.
That’s my nature, and I expect other people to be like. And I want to respect their variance—their departure, their originality. I want to hear from them.
—at Trinity College, October 11, 1962:
APROFESSORof considerable standing said to me the other day—(I’ve been with him a good many times.)—he said, “I never saw a head so full of bad poetry as yours.”
I said to him: “Charlie, that’s fatal. If it’s in my head it means it’s a good poem. If I know it, it’s a good poem. That’s the way I know it’s good, because it’s memorable. That’s what poetry was written for in the first place, to be memorable, so you couldn’t get it out of your head.”