The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [194]
The wind blew more and more strongly; my eyes were full of dust. ‘Why should such a misfortune happen to him, of all people?’ I asked (but in a casual tone, so that Szuman would not think I was asking for information).
‘It is due both to Staś’s nature and the relationships civilisation forms,’ the doctor replied.
‘His nature? He was never amorous.’
‘And that has destroyed him,’ Szuman went on, ‘a thousand tons of snow, divided into flakes, merely scatter over the earth without harming the smallest blade of grass; but a hundred tons of snow, crammed into an avalanche, will smash houses and kill people. Had Wokulski been in love with a different woman every week of his life, he’d look fresh, he’d have his mind at rest and could do much good in the world. But, like a miser, he has hoarded his heart’s capital and now we see the results of this economy. Love is beautiful when it has the charm of a butterfly; but when it awakens like a tiger after a long lethargy, then there’s nothing amusing in it! A man with a healthy appetite is different from a man whose innards are rended with famine…’
The clouds were rising still higher: almost at the city gates we turned back. I thought that Staś must by this time be almost at Ruda Guzowska.
The doctor went on talking, more feverishly, waving his walking-stick still more fiercely: ‘There are rules of hygiene for dwellings and clothes, for food and work, which the lower classes do not observe, and that is the cause of their high mortality rate, their short lives and their debility. But there are also rules of hygiene for love, which the intelligentsia fail to observe and even violate, and that is one of the causes for their downfall. Hygiene tells a man to eat when he is hungry, but for all that a thousand rules will trip you up, protesting: “Forbidden!” You will eat when we authorise you to, when you fulfil this, that and the other conditions laid down by morality, tradition, fashion … You must admit that in this respect the most backward states are in advance of the progressive societies, or at least of their intelligentsia.
‘Just look, Ignacy, how well the nursery, the drawing-room, poetry, novels and plays work together to stupefy people. They urge you to seek ideals, be an ideal ascetic yourself and not only obey but even create some artificial condition or other. What’s the result? A man, usually less trained in these matters, becomes the prey of a woman who is trained for nothing but that purpose. So women really rule civilisation!’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ I asked.
‘Confound it,’ the doctor exclaimed, ‘haven’t you noticed, Ignacy, that if a man is spiritually a fly, a woman is still more so, for she has no wings or feet? Education, tradition, perhaps even inheritance make a monstrous thing of her with the pretence of making her a higher being. And this idle monstrosity, with its crooked feet, compressed trunk, empty brain — nevertheless has the task of bringing up future generations of mankind. So what does she instil in them? Does she teach her children to work for their living? No, they learn how to hold a knife and fork nicely. Do they learn how to understand the people among whom they will have to live? No, they learn to please by putting on grimaces and bowing. Do they learn real facts which determine our happiness or unhappiness? No, they learn to close their eyes to the facts and to dream about ideals. Our softness in life, our impracticality, laziness, flunkeyism and those terrible bonds of stupidity which have been weighing down mankind for centuries are the result of pedagogy as applied by women. And our women, in turn, are the product of a clerical, feudal and poetical theory of love, which is offensive to hygiene and to common sense…’
My head was whirling with the doctor’s statements and he pressed on along the street like