Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [129]
Whereupon young Øien will say—oh, I know him, he’ll say, But really, this is just theory, paradoxes.
I cannot see it as just theory, I just cannot, God help me, so hopelessly different is my view of things. Is it my fault? I mean, am I personally to blame for it? I’m an alien, a stranger on earth, God’s idée fixe, call me what you will....
With increasing vehemence: I’m telling you, it makes no difference what you call me; I’ll not surrender, never in all my life. I clench my teeth and harden my heart because I’m right; I will stand before the world, one man against all, and not give in! I know what I know, in my heart I’m right; once in a while, at certain moments, I have a hunch of the infinite interconnectedness of all things. I still have something to add which I forgot, I won’t yield: I’ll knock down all your stupid assumptions concerning the great men. Young Øien maintains that my view is nothing but a theory. Good; if my view is a theory I’ll chuck it and come up with one that’s better still. I stick at nothing. And I say—wait a moment, I’m convinced I can say something still better, because my heart is full of rightness: I despise and deride that great man in the white-tie box; my heart tells me he’s a clown and a fool, my lips purse with contempt when I see his puffed-up breast and his supremely confident air. Has the great man fought his way to genius by himself? Wasn’t he born with it? Why, then, make such a song and dance about him?
Young Øien remarks, But you yourself want to put His Eminence Excess in his rightful place; you do, after all, admire the arch-spirit, who didn’t fight his way to genius by himself, either!
Young Øien believes he has caught me once more in an inconsistency, that’s how it looks to him! But I answer him again, because my sense of holy rightness has taken possession of me: I don’t admire the arch-spirit either, I shall crush even His Eminence Excess, if necessary, and sweep the earth clean. The arch-spirit is admired for his greatness, for his excess of genius—as though he had only himself to thank for his genius, as though the genius didn’t belong to our collective humanity, being, literally, a property of matter itself! The fact that the arch-spirit has coincidentally sucked up his great-grandfather‘s, his grandfather’s, his father‘s, his son’s, his grandson’s and his great-grandson’s share of genius, and has laid waste to his lineage for centuries—this is not the fault of the arch-spirit himself, no, it’s not! He discovered the genius within him, understood its purpose and used it.... Theory? No, it’s not theory; consider it my heartfelt conviction! But if this too is theory, I’ll search my brain and find a fresh solution; and more, I’ll come up with a third, fourth, and fifth crushing contradiction, as best I can, and not give up.
But young Øien doesn’t give up either, because he’s backed by the whole world, and he says, Then there’s nothing left to admire, no great man, no genius!
And I answer, making him feel more and more ill at ease as time goes on, because he’s going to be a great man himself. I again throw cold water on him, replying, No, I don’t admire the genius. But I admire and love the result of the genius’s activity in the world, of which the great man is only the poor necessary tool, only, so to speak, the paltry awl to bore with.... Will that do? Have you understood