💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › han-ryner-old-man-diogenes.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 10:49:20. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Old Man Diogenes Author: Han Ryner Date: 1920 Language: en Topics: individualist, philosophy Source: Retrieved on 9 September 2011 from http://www.marxists.org/archive/ryner/1920/diogenes.htm Notes: Source: Le Père Diogène. Figuière, Paris, 1920; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2009. Transcribed: by Mitchell Abidor.
A few years ago the University of Plantopolis had a professor of foreign
literature who was considered unusual. The body of a young giant,
formidable and rudimentary; large, irregular, even violent traits; a
passionate physiognomy, at times lightened with malice or elevated by
lyricism, at other times heavy with a reflective seriousness. Long brown
hair, shaggy and standing upright, an abundant and hairy beard that met
it; black sparkling eyes, buried deep beneath his bushy brows; and a
mouth large as a laugh or eloquence was not the thing about him that
surprised most strongly or lastingly.
Dressed in a barely decent fashion he lived, in the working class
quarter, in a room that a poor student would have disdained. Not a
painting the length of the walls; not an engraving, or even a postcard
or photograph. Not a single knickknack anywhere. A narrow steel bed, an
immense kitchen table covered with papers which, had they been spread
out, would have allowed countless ink stains to be seen; three backless
straw chairs. And yet the rare visitors admitted to what the occupant
called “Diogenes’ barrel” noted certain particular luxuries. They
weren’t surprised to find at a professor’s house many books, some of
which were rare. But there was a sign wealth that, in its very banality
and bourgeois character was strange: an armoire topped with a mirror
spread its solid and flat light. On high, a large writing desk bore, in
counsel or ironically, the Socratic motto in the original: know thyself.
The young professor who recommended in Greek to know oneself took, on
the corner of a rustic table, common and meager meals. His pots and pans
and his table service, most often relegated and tossed into the bottom
of the armoire, consisted of a kettle, a ladle, a salt box, a knife, a
spoon and a fork. Nary a glass. The young professor only drank water,
and he drank this directly from the ladle. He sustained his large body
with cheese, cheap cold cuts, and a few vegetables that he boiled with
no other seasoning than salt.
This man wasn’t a miser. There is nothing more common than a miser in
small cities, and this vice surprises no one there. At the end of every
month our eccentric distributed almost his entire salary to the poor.
This eccentric wasn’t a saint. He never stepped foot in a church, and
meeting a priest caused a smile of contempt to cross his lips. Our
bizarre personage didn’t invest his money anywhere so that it could be
returned to him increased a hundred-fold in the other world, not even at
the bank of the merciful God.
The bizarre personage was also not what is called a philanthropist. He
defended himself from feeling any sentiment, and only ever spoke with
disdain of pity: “A low and soft passion, good for women or for other
low natures who the indigence of their nature condemns to choose between
weak gentleness and cruelty.
Protestants or royalists, socialists or Freemasons, the faithful of all
religions declared him mad. Radicals or Catholics, he wasn’t judged any
more favorably by party members. How many Platanopolitans escape the
various herds? These rare independents, of a skeptical spirit, willingly
suspend judgment. I think that they suspected the strange professor of
being not much less mad that those who proclaimed his madness. But his
dementia seemed more interesting, more picturesque to them and, one
might say, less stupid. They observed him with a wary and sympathetic
curiosity.
Public opinion judges randomly. Would randomness deserve its name if it
was always wrong? Here it risked being right.
The young professor in fact manifested a few symptoms of madness. It was
perhaps not they that caused him to be accused of dementia.
Of the madman he had the mania for ostentation, the need to explain to
all comers and to glorify all his acts. He gladly spoke of nature and
the natural life. But his natural had something grandiloquent about it.
His public classes were very popular. It was impossible to deny their
abundant, vast, and deep erudition, or their personal views. Often even
those most on their guard and hostile applauded loudly, thanks to their
noble, lively, and lyrical tone. The eloquent and witty professor was
hated and admired. He was all the more hated because one was forced to
admire him.
His classes were hardly perfect. Sparkling and tumultuous, or fraught
with points that tickled to laughter, they were lacking in grace and
flexibility, and they often wounded the sense of measure and balance.
They were attacked for their long and unjustified digressions. The old
dean, who had taught successive generations official philosophy for
forty years said with bitterness, despite his customary indulgence: “The
professor of foreign literature is encroaching on my field.” Whenever he
could, the professor of foreign literature in fact did forget his title
and dedicated half of his lessons to the Greek moralists.
The strange professor who caused scandal in so many ways (madness is
not, in the university, much less scandalous than talent) was called,
according to his official records, Julien Duchène. But he normally
signed Lepère-Duchène. Even on official documents he called himself
“Julien Duchène, alias Lepère-Duchène.” No one knew the reason for this
eccentricity, behind which was suspected a temerity that was as
revolutionary as it was indecent. In his diatribes against Plato, who he
treated as a personal enemy, he opposed Diogenes of Synope to the author
of the Laws, “the greatest man of all time and of all countries, if it
can be said of a great man that he belongs to a specific time or
country.” Amused by his admiration for the Cynic and by the Cynicism of
his morals, despite his youth his students nicknamed him “Old Man
Diogenes.”
He knew of this nickname and was proud of it: “May it please whatever it
is that will perhaps replace the gods that I some day deserve such
glory.”
As happens with obvious madmen the opinion people had of him contributed
to molding him. As soon as he became Old Man Diogenes for the others,
not only did he move ever closer to the ancient Cynics by his conduct
and diet, but he began to think of imitating them completely. If no
force were to stop him on this slope, it became increasingly probable
that he would one day adopt the Cynical life style.
The school vacation, which he passed in the small village of
Saint-Julien-en-Beauchène, was one long crisis for him. “One more combat
like this one and my victory will be complete.” These internal words
meant that he would adopt the Greek cloak, sandals, the heavy rod, the
pouch, and the wandering and mendicant life.
A contrary force seemed to manifest itself. At his first public class
that year he noted a young girl whose beauty he found to be simple and
natural. A blonde, tall, slim, of a supple, almost spiritual grace. The
large blue eyes sparkled with intelligence and enthusiasm when the
orator pronounced noble words. The lips, of a delicate design and color,
opened, honest and sonorous, if he set loose an amusing phrase. She was
always the first to understand. Did she not already understand what was
going to be said? With a spontaneous movement that showed no hesitation,
almost before the end of an amusing or magnificent sentence, she gave
the signal for laughter or applause.
From the second time he caught a glimpse of the moving young girl in the
audience the young professor spoke only to her. Like so many private
madrigals, his mind dedicated to her his universal epigrams of a
misanthrope who was amusing himself. It was she who his lyrical
outbursts invited on brotherly flights far from men, their lies and
their miseries.
For a few days Old man Diogenes contented himself with the vaguest of
dreams. And then he felt the need to fix them, make them more precise.
He gathered information. The young girl belonged to what the provinces
call “an honest family.” The father was triply honored as a retired
colonel, an officer of the Legion of Honor, and as chief church warden
of his parish. A fortunate encounter, and one of admirable balance, her
mother was the daughter of an honorable deceased who, while alive,
exercised the honorable profession of republican prefect. She had given
her daughter, upon leaving Saint-Denis, all the benefits of what
Platanopolis calls “a liberal education.” Lucie played the piano, drew,
did watercolors and had a higher diploma. For her own pleasure and
improvement, for the past two years she took the other public classes of
the faculty of letters. That year, despite Julien Duchène’s bad
reputation, she had been allowed to attend, in the company of her
overweight mother, the class in foreign literature.