and even in your way of feeling. Whoever is loved and admired founds a school and forms a fashion in spite of himself.’
‘Whoever is loved and admired; exactly,’ said Paulus. ‘Well, my mother has created Jaël in her own image. Thus, my mother loves Jaël, Jaël loves my mother, and my father and my sisters worship them both. However, when I bring myself to approach Jaël as my wife I am overcome with a feeling that not only am I about to perpetrate some nameless abomination with my entire family – I am going to lie with four women all of whom I find somehow repulsive.’
I said: ‘You speak with little respect of your mother, Paulus.’
‘Do I? Then I express myself badly, or you pretend not to understand me. I have the deepest respect for my mother, and I honour her according to the Law.’
‘According to the Law,’ I said. ‘Save us from your Law! Such honour has too many loopholes…. And your father?’
‘My father is my mother’s husband,’ Paulus said, impatiently . Then he began to talk to me almost in the tone of an elderly gentleman with all his follies behind him, made wise by suffering and hardened in his opinions by a long series of disillusionments. It is at the same time comical and sad, when a softly-nurtured youth talks like this to a man whose cheek felt the edge of a sword before it knew the razor, as mine did; and who has mourned dead father, mother, brothers, wife and son, as I had before my twenty-fifth year.
But I managed to keep a straight face as Paulus said: ‘Diomed! Beware of women! They will stop at nothing to gain power. They are sensual and greedy to the soul. They are all dangerous, devious, treacherous and lustful. There is no such thing as a truly virtuous woman. All their love is fleshly. Even good women use their purity only for vain and selfish purposes. They cannot help it – they are made so. Their youthful beauty is a delusion; and there is nothing so sickening as the hideousness of an old woman, because she is Woman unmasked. Woman is a quagmire – it is her nature to suck indiscriminately down into herself. She caresses in order to crush and crushes in order to swallow, having first bathed you in her saliva – like the Serpent, who found her, of all created creatures in Eden, the one that was open to his wicked counsel. Open, open, open! She is always open, like a pitfall. She gives birth to something small only to take it back again when it is large. She must squeeze flowers to disguise the fact that she stinks like a slaughterhouse . She is the Cow of Egypt with an obscene belly. She is the crocodile of the Nile in her tears – she cries only to lure the pitiful within reach of her sepulchral mouth. Tears! Offend her – and your every word offends her if it is not her word too – and she will weep you to distraction. Say nothing, do nothing, and she will ask: “What have I done wrong?” until you go away; when she will weep you back to beg forgiveness for having made her cry. Diomed, she contaminates you with hypocrisy and deceit. It is impossible to be honest with a woman and live in peace with her. She drives you into hiding in the coldest caves of your echoing heart. Woe to the house that is ruled by a woman! And woe to the council in which any woman has a voice, for it is weakness that votes her there!’
I said: ‘By which I infer – since we had been speaking of your father – that your mother rules your father’s house, and your father acts on your mother’s advice.’ I had knownthis long before; and I knew, also, that there is a certain rottenness in a man who can so consistently act in accordance with evil advice. If he knows no better, he is wrong; if he knows better but is constantly prevailed upon, he is wrong. A bad adviser is not necessarily always to be blamed for a wrong course of action. ‘Still, you honour your father.’
‘According to the Law.’
‘There is no law, however, which can command you to love, I
‘Whoever is loved and admired; exactly,’ said Paulus. ‘Well, my mother has created Jaël in her own image. Thus, my mother loves Jaël, Jaël loves my mother, and my father and my sisters worship them both. However, when I bring myself to approach Jaël as my wife I am overcome with a feeling that not only am I about to perpetrate some nameless abomination with my entire family – I am going to lie with four women all of whom I find somehow repulsive.’
I said: ‘You speak with little respect of your mother, Paulus.’
‘Do I? Then I express myself badly, or you pretend not to understand me. I have the deepest respect for my mother, and I honour her according to the Law.’
‘According to the Law,’ I said. ‘Save us from your Law! Such honour has too many loopholes…. And your father?’
‘My father is my mother’s husband,’ Paulus said, impatiently . Then he began to talk to me almost in the tone of an elderly gentleman with all his follies behind him, made wise by suffering and hardened in his opinions by a long series of disillusionments. It is at the same time comical and sad, when a softly-nurtured youth talks like this to a man whose cheek felt the edge of a sword before it knew the razor, as mine did; and who has mourned dead father, mother, brothers, wife and son, as I had before my twenty-fifth year.
But I managed to keep a straight face as Paulus said: ‘Diomed! Beware of women! They will stop at nothing to gain power. They are sensual and greedy to the soul. They are all dangerous, devious, treacherous and lustful. There is no such thing as a truly virtuous woman. All their love is fleshly. Even good women use their purity only for vain and selfish purposes. They cannot help it – they are made so. Their youthful beauty is a delusion; and there is nothing so sickening as the hideousness of an old woman, because she is Woman unmasked. Woman is a quagmire – it is her nature to suck indiscriminately down into herself. She caresses in order to crush and crushes in order to swallow, having first bathed you in her saliva – like the Serpent, who found her, of all created creatures in Eden, the one that was open to his wicked counsel. Open, open, open! She is always open, like a pitfall. She gives birth to something small only to take it back again when it is large. She must squeeze flowers to disguise the fact that she stinks like a slaughterhouse . She is the Cow of Egypt with an obscene belly. She is the crocodile of the Nile in her tears – she cries only to lure the pitiful within reach of her sepulchral mouth. Tears! Offend her – and your every word offends her if it is not her word too – and she will weep you to distraction. Say nothing, do nothing, and she will ask: “What have I done wrong?” until you go away; when she will weep you back to beg forgiveness for having made her cry. Diomed, she contaminates you with hypocrisy and deceit. It is impossible to be honest with a woman and live in peace with her. She drives you into hiding in the coldest caves of your echoing heart. Woe to the house that is ruled by a woman! And woe to the council in which any woman has a voice, for it is weakness that votes her there!’
I said: ‘By which I infer – since we had been speaking of your father – that your mother rules your father’s house, and your father acts on your mother’s advice.’ I had knownthis long before; and I knew, also, that there is a certain rottenness in a man who can so consistently act in accordance with evil advice. If he knows no better, he is wrong; if he knows better but is constantly prevailed upon, he is wrong. A bad adviser is not necessarily always to be blamed for a wrong course of action. ‘Still, you honour your father.’
‘According to the Law.’
‘There is no law, however, which can command you to love, I
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