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Title: The two pens Author: Ricardo Flores Magón Date: 1915 Language: en Topics: fiction Source: Retrieved on April 8th, 2009 from http://www.waste.org/~roadrunner/writing/magon/ENArticles/pens.html Notes: Translated from Spanish by Mitchell Cowen Verter. From “Regeneration” number 212. November 13, 1915.
Behind the window of a display case, the gold pen and the steel pen
waited for someone to buy them. The gold pen rested indolently in a rich
jewel case that increased its glamour; the steel pen confirmed its
modesty at the base of a cardboard casket. Pedestrians, poor and rich,
old and young, passed again and again by the display case, casting
greedy glances towards the gold pen; nobody looked at the steel one. The
sun crashed its rays upon the gold pen, which gleamed with sparkles like
glowing embers in its chenille cushion; but it was unable to impress
even a dim tone of beauty upon the dark proletarian pen. Regarding its
poor brother with pity, the rich pen said:
“Poor mangy thing! Learn to be admired.”
Accustomed to great struggles for the highest ideals, the proletarian
pen deemed it unworthy to answer that foolishness. Emboldened by the
silence of the humble pen, the bourgeois pen said:
“Why don’t you try, you squalid thing, to look like me, to be a gold
pen?” And it shone in its chenille like a star in the satin of the sky.
The proletarian pen could not repress a smile, which angered the
bourgeois pen, making it break out in nonsense like this:
“Your smile is a smile of impotence. It fills me with pity. Could you be
used, like I am, to sign bank notes for millions and millions of
dollars? I occupy a place of honor in mahogany and cedar writing desks.
In palaces, the elegant writer signs his articles with me. Using me, the
minister authorizes important documents for the entire nation. The
president endorses his decrees with a signature which only I shall
delineate. War is not declared unless an august hand takes me in its
fingers, and has me fix its sovereign signature on paper. Peace can not
be agreed upon with mangy steel pens: they must be golden. With a gold
pen, the young aristocrat composes his verses of love to the genteel
lady.”
Patience has its limits for a steel pen. Thus, the modest pen, from the
base of its cardboard casket, raised its clear, sincere voice, and, as
it was sincere, it was also handsome and grand, to say:
“Above all things, the pen is grand because it makes it possible for a
great mind to free itself from the prison of its skull, to go out and
shake other minds that sleep caged in other skulls. It makes them
welcome the great mind with hospitality, granting it entrance. Doors
should be opened and accommodations should be furnished for all who
bring light, hope, valor ... But you, vain pen, you are the disgrace of
our species. I would rather break my tips than lend myself to sketching
the signature that endorses a bank order for thousands of millions of
dollars. An order like this is the result of a pact made between
bandits. My place is not on a mahogany writing desk. I prefer a pine
table, upon which the people’s scribe outlines the robust phrases that
announce to the world an era of liberty and justice. I am the pen of the
people, and like them, I am strong and sincere. The minister does not
touch me to underwrite documents that sanction exploitation and tyranny.
Neither does the president grasp me to authorize laws that command
slavery and the torments of the humble, nor to order criminal wars, nor
to humiliating peace treaties. But when the thinker takes me between his
creative fingers, when the poet and the sage touches me with his fecund,
anarchist hands, making me engrave in blank notebooks his bright
meditations like the idea of class struggle, I feel my molecules tremble
with emotion, an emotion that is pure, strong, sound. This is my
pleasure, because, as I am humble, I move in the world of talent,
sincerity, and honor. My power is immense, my influence is gigantic.
When the proletarian writer takes me in his hands, the tyrant trembles,
the priest is terrified, the capitalist turns pale; but liberty smiles
with the smile of the dawn; the downtrodden dream of a better world, and
the valiant hand nervously caresses the firearm of vengeance and
redemption. In my cardboard casket, I feel grand and noble. As humble as
I may seem to you, I stir people. I knock down thrones, I upset
cathedrals, I humble gods. I am light for the darkness of the mind. I am
the bugle that calls the humble to arms, and converts them to
magnificence. I resound for the revolutionary militia, gathering the
brave in the trench and summoning the men to the barricades. You serve
to endorse the decrees of the tyrant; I to endorse the proclamations of
the rebel. You oppress, I liberate.”
The crash of an car motor, which broke through the front of the shop,
prevented the rest of the proletarian pen’s engaging discourse from
being heard.