The Diabolist
by G.K. Chesterton
Every now and then I have introduced into my essays an element of truth. Things that really happened have been mentioned, such is meeting President Kruger or being thrown out of a cab. What I have now to relate really happened; yet there was no element in it of practical politics or of personal danger. It was simply a quiet conversation which I had with another man. But that quiet conversation was by far the most terrible thing that has ever happened to me in my life. It happened so long ago that I cannot be certain of the exact words of the dialogue, only of its main questions and answers; but there is one sentence in it for which I can answer absolutely and word for word. It was a sentence so awful that I could not forget it if I would. It was the last sentence spoken; and it was not spoken to me.
The thing befell me in the days when I was at an art school. An art school is different from almost all other schools or colleges in this respect: that, being of new and crude creation and of lax discipline, it presents a specially strong contrast between the industrious and the idle. People at an art school either do an atrocious amount of work or do no work at all. I belonged, along with other charming people, to the latter class; and this threw me often into the society of men who were very different from myself, and who were idle for reasons very different from mine. I was idle because I was very much occupied; I was engaged about that time in discovering, to my own extreme and lasting astonishment, that I was not an atheist. But there were others also at loose ends who were engaged in discovering what Carlyle called (I think with needless delicacy) the fact that ginger is hot in the mouth.
I value that time, in short, because it made me acquainted with a good representative number of blackguards. In this connection there are two very curious things which the critic of human life may observe. The first is the fact that there is one real difference between men and women; that women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes. The second is that when you find (as you often do) three young cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together every day you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for some extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. In these small groups devoted to a drivelling dissipation there is almost always one man who seems to have condescended to his company; one man who, while he can talk a foul triviality with his fellows, can also talk politics with a Socialist, or philosophy with a Catholic.
It was just such a man whom I came to know well. It was strange, perhaps, that he liked his dirty, drunken society; it was stranger still, perhaps, that he liked my society. For hours of the day he would talk with me about Milton or Gothic architecture; for hours of the night he would go where I have no wish to follow him, even in speculation. He was a man with a long, ironical face, and close and red hair; he was by class a gentleman, and could walk like one, but preferred, for some reason, to walk like a groom carrying two pails. He looked liked a sort of Super-jockey; as if some archangel had gone on the Turf. And I shall never forget the half-hour in which he and I argued about real things for the first and the last time.
Along the front of the big building of which our school was a part ran a huge slope of stone steps, higher, I think, than those that lead up to St. Paul’s Cathedral. On a black wintry evening he and I were wandering on these cold heights, which seemed as dreary as a pyramid under the stars. The one thing visible below us in the blackness was a burning and blowing fire; for some gardener (I suppose) was burning something in the grounds, and from time to time the red sparks went whirling past us like a swarm of scarlet insects in the dark. Above us also it was gloom; but if one stared long enough at that upper darkness, one saw vertical stripes of grey in the black and then became conscious of the colossal facade of the Doric building, phantasmal, yet filling the sky, as if Heaven were still filled with the gigantic ghost of Paganism.
The man asked me abruptly why I was becoming orthodox. Until he said it, I really had not known that I was; but the moment he had said it I knew it to be literally true. And the process had been so long and full that I answered him at once out of existing stores of explanation.
“I am becoming orthodox,” I said, “because I have come, rightly or wrongly, after stretching my brain till it bursts, to the old belief that heresy is worse even than sin. An error is more menacing than a crime, for an error begets crimes. An Imperialist is worse than a pirate. For an Imperialist keeps a school for pirates; he teaches piracy disinterestedly and without an adequate salary. A Free Lover is worse than a profligate. For a profligate is serious and reckless even in his shortest love; while a Free Lover is cautious and irresponsible even in his longest devotion. I hate modern doubt because it is dangerous.”
“You mean dangerous to morality,” he said in a voice of wonderful gentleness. “I expect you are right. But why do you care about morality?”
I glanced at his face quickly. He had thrust out his neck as he had a trick of doing; and so brought his face abruptly into the light of the bonfire from below, like a face in the footlights. His long chin and high cheek-bones were lit up infernally from underneath; so that he looked like a fiend staring down into the flaming pit. I had an unmeaning sense of being tempted in a wilderness; and even as I paused a burst of red sparks broke past.
“Aren’t those sparks splendid?” I said.
“Yes,” he replied.
“That is all that I ask you to admit,” said I. “Give me those few red specks and I will deduce Christian morality. Once I thought like you, that one’s pleasure in a flying spark was a thing that could come and go with that spark. Once I thought that the delight was as free as the fire. Once I thought that red star we see was alone in space. But now I know that the red star is only on the apex of an invisible pyramid of virtues. That red fire is only the flower on a stalk of living habits, which you cannot see. Only because your mother made you say ‘Thank you’ for a bun are you now able to thank Nature or chaos for those red stars of an instant or for the white stars of all time. Only because you were humble before fireworks on the fifth of November do you now enjoy any fireworks that you chance to see. You only like them being red because you were told about the blood of the martyrs; you only like them being bright because brightness is a glory. That flame flowered out of virtues, and it will fade with virtues. Seduce a woman, and that spark will be less bright. Shed blood, and that spark will be less red. Be really bad, and they will be to you like the spots on a wall-paper.”
He had a horrible fairness of the intellect that made me despair of his soul. A common, harmless atheist would have denied that religion produced humility or humility a simple joy: but he admitted both. He only said, “But shall I not find in evil a life of its own? Granted that for every woman I ruin one of those red sparks will go out: will not the expanding pleasure of ruin …”
“Do you see that fire ?” I asked. “If we had a real fighting democracy, some one would burn you in it; like the devil-worshipper that you are.”
“Perhaps,” he said, in his tired, fair way. “Only what you call evil I call good.”
He went down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the steps swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my hat in the low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his voice again, but the words were inaudible. I stopped, startled: then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his associates saying, “Nobody can possibly know.” And then I heard those two or three words which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I heard the Diabolist say, “I tell you I have done everything else. If I do that I shan’t know the difference between right and wrong.” I rushed out without daring to pause; and as I passed the fire I did not know whether it was hell or the furious love of God.
I have since heard that he died: it may be said, I think, that he committed suicide; though he did it with tools of pleasure, not with tools of pain. God help him, I know the road he went; but I have never known, or even dared to think, what was that place at which he stopped and refrained.
(from Tremendous Trifles, 1909)
The Diabolist
by G.K. Chesterton
Every now and then I have introduced into my essays an element of truth. Things that really happened have been mentioned, such is meeting President Kruger or being thrown out of a cab. What I have now to relate really happened; yet there was no element in it of practical politics or of personal danger. It was simply a quiet conversation which I had with another man. But that quiet conversation was by far the most terrible thing that has ever happened to me in my life. It happened so long ago that I cannot be certain of the exact words of the dialogue, only of its main questions and answers; but there is one sentence in it for which I can answer absolutely and word for word. It was a sentence so awful that I could not forget it if I would. It was the last sentence spoken; and it was not spoken to me.
The thing befell me in the days when I was at an art school. An art school is different from almost all other schools or colleges in this respect: that, being of new and crude creation and of lax discipline, it presents a specially strong contrast between the industrious and the idle. People at an art school either do an atrocious amount of work or do no work at all. I belonged, along with other charming people, to the latter class; and this threw me often into the society of men who were very different from myself, and who were idle for reasons very different from mine. I was idle because I was very much occupied; I was engaged about that time in discovering, to my own extreme and lasting astonishment, that I was not an atheist. But there were others also at loose ends who were engaged in discovering what Carlyle called (I think with needless delicacy) the fact that ginger is hot in the mouth.
I value that time, in short, because it made me acquainted with a good representative number of blackguards. In this connection there are two very curious things which the critic of human life may observe. The first is the fact that there is one real difference between men and women; that women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes. The second is that when you find (as you often do) three young cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together every day you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for some extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. In these small groups devoted to a drivelling dissipation there is almost always one man who seems to have condescended to his company; one man who, while he can talk a foul triviality with his fellows, can also talk politics with a Socialist, or philosophy with a Catholic.
It was just such a man whom I came to know well. It was strange, perhaps, that he liked his dirty, drunken society; it was stranger still, perhaps, that he liked my society. For hours of the day he would talk with me about Milton or Gothic architecture; for hours of the night he would go where I have no wish to follow him, even in speculation. He was a man with a long, ironical face, and close and red hair; he was by class a gentleman, and could walk like one, but preferred, for some reason, to walk like a groom carrying two pails. He looked liked a sort of Super-jockey; as if some archangel had gone on the Turf. And I shall never forget the half-hour in which he and I argued about real things for the first and the last time.
Along the front of the big building of which our school was a part ran a huge slope of stone steps, higher, I think, than those that lead up to St. Paul’s Cathedral. On a black wintry evening he and I were wandering on these cold heights, which seemed as dreary as a pyramid under the stars. The one thing visible below us in the blackness was a burning and blowing fire; for some gardener (I suppose) was burning something in the grounds, and from time to time the red sparks went whirling past us like a swarm of scarlet insects in the dark. Above us also it was gloom; but if one stared long enough at that upper darkness, one saw vertical stripes of grey in the black and then became conscious of the colossal facade of the Doric building, phantasmal, yet filling the sky, as if Heaven were still filled with the gigantic ghost of Paganism.
The man asked me abruptly why I was becoming orthodox. Until he said it, I really had not known that I was; but the moment he had said it I knew it to be literally true. And the process had been so long and full that I answered him at once out of existing stores of explanation.
“I am becoming orthodox,” I said, “because I have come, rightly or wrongly, after stretching my brain till it bursts, to the old belief that heresy is worse even than sin. An error is more menacing than a crime, for an error begets crimes. An Imperialist is worse than a pirate. For an Imperialist keeps a school for pirates; he teaches piracy disinterestedly and without an adequate salary. A Free Lover is worse than a profligate. For a profligate is serious and reckless even in his shortest love; while a Free Lover is cautious and irresponsible even in his longest devotion. I hate modern doubt because it is dangerous.”
“You mean dangerous to morality,” he said in a voice of wonderful gentleness. “I expect you are right. But why do you care about morality?”
I glanced at his face quickly. He had thrust out his neck as he had a trick of doing; and so brought his face abruptly into the light of the bonfire from below, like a face in the footlights. His long chin and high cheek-bones were lit up infernally from underneath; so that he looked like a fiend staring down into the flaming pit. I had an unmeaning sense of being tempted in a wilderness; and even as I paused a burst of red sparks broke past.
“Aren’t those sparks splendid?” I said.
“Yes,” he replied.
Il Diabolista
di G.K. Chesterton
Di tanto in tanto ho introdotto nei miei saggi un elemento di verità. Sono state menzionate cose realmente accadute, come l’incontro col presidente Kruger o l’essere stato scaraventato fuori da una carrozza. Ciò che ora devo raccontare accadde davvero; eppure non conteneva alcun elemento di politica pratica né di pericolo personale. Fu semplicemente una tranquilla conversazione che ebbi con un altro uomo. Ma quella tranquilla conversazione fu di gran lunga la cosa più terribile che mi sia mai accaduta in vita mia. Accadde tanto tempo fa che non posso essere certo delle parole esatte del dialogo, ma solo delle sue domande e risposte principali; c’è però una frase, in esso, di cui posso rispondere in modo assoluto e parola per parola. Era una frase tanto tremenda che non potrei dimenticarla nemmeno volendo. Fu l’ultima frase pronunciata; e non fu pronunciata a me.
La cosa mi capitò nei giorni in cui frequentavo una scuola d’arte. Una scuola d’arte differisce da quasi tutte le altre scuole o collegi in questo: che, essendo di nuova e rozza creazione e di lassa disciplina, presenta un contrasto particolarmente forte tra gli industriosi e gli oziosi. Chi frequenta una scuola d’arte o svolge una quantità atroce di lavoro o non lavora affatto. Io appartenevo, insieme ad altre persone deliziose, a quest’ultima classe; e ciò mi gettava spesso nella società di uomini assai diversi da me, e che erano oziosi per ragioni assai diverse dalle mie. Io ero ozioso perché ero molto occupato; ero impegnato, in quel periodo, a scoprire, con mia estrema e duratura sorpresa, che non ero ateo. Ma c’erano anche altri sbandati impegnati a scoprire ciò che Carlyle chiamava (credo con inutile delicatezza) il fatto che lo zenzero è piccante in bocca.
Insomma, apprezzo quel periodo perché mi rese familiare un buon numero rappresentativo di canaglie. A questo proposito ci sono due cose assai curiose che il critico della vita umana può osservare. La prima è il fatto che c’è una vera differenza tra uomini e donne; che le donne preferiscono parlare a due a due, mentre gli uomini preferiscono parlare a tre a tre. La seconda è che quando trovi (come spesso accade) tre giovani mascalzoni e idioti che vanno in giro insieme e si ubriacano insieme ogni giorno, generalmente scopri che uno dei tre mascalzoni e idioti è (per qualche straordinaria ragione) non un mascalzone e non un idiota. In questi piccoli gruppi votati a una bavosa dissipazione c’è quasi sempre un uomo che sembra essersi degnato di scendere alla propria compagnia; un uomo che, pur sapendo scambiare una turpe banalità con i suoi compari, sa anche parlare di politica con un socialista, o di filosofia con un cattolico.
Fu proprio un uomo simile che giunsi a conoscere bene. Era strano, forse, che gli piacesse la sua sudicia e ubriaca compagnia; era ancor più strano, forse, che gli piacesse la mia compagnia. Per ore del giorno mi parlava di Milton o di architettura gotica; per ore della notte andava dove non ho alcun desiderio di seguirlo, nemmeno con la speculazione. Era un uomo dal viso lungo e ironico, e dai capelli fitti e rossi; era di classe un gentiluomo, e sapeva camminare come tale, ma preferiva, per qualche ragione, camminare come uno stalliere che porta due secchi. Aveva l’aria di una specie di super-fantino; come se qualche arcangelo si fosse dato all’ippica. E non dimenticherò mai la mezz’ora in cui lui e io discutemmo di cose reali per la prima e l’ultima volta.
Lungo la facciata del grande edificio di cui la nostra scuola era parte correva un’enorme rampa di gradini di pietra, più alta, credo, di quelli che salgono alla Cattedrale di San Paolo. In una nera sera invernale lui e io vagavamo su quelle fredde alture, che parevano tetre come una piramide sotto le stelle. L’unica cosa visibile sotto di noi, nell’oscurità, era un fuoco che ardeva e soffiava; poiché qualche giardiniere (suppongo) stava bruciando qualcosa nel parco, e di tanto in tanto le rosse scintille ci sfrecciavano accanto come uno sciame di scarlatti insetti nel buio. Anche sopra di noi era tenebra; ma se si fissava abbastanza a lungo quell’oscurità superiore, si vedevano strisce verticali di grigio nel nero, e allora si diveniva consapevoli della colossale facciata dell’edificio dorico, spettrale eppure tale da riempire il cielo, come se il Cielo fosse ancora colmo del gigantesco fantasma del Paganesimo.
L’uomo mi chiese bruscamente perché stessi diventando ortodosso. Finché non lo disse, non avevo davvero saputo di esserlo; ma nel momento in cui lo disse seppi che era letteralmente vero. E il processo era stato tanto lungo e pieno che gli risposi subito, attingendo alle scorte di spiegazione già esistenti.
“Sto diventando ortodosso,” dissi, “perché sono giunto, a torto o a ragione, dopo aver teso il cervello fino a farlo scoppiare, all’antica convinzione che l’eresia sia peggiore perfino del peccato. Un errore è più minaccioso di un delitto, perché un errore genera delitti. Un imperialista è peggio di un pirata. Perché un imperialista tiene una scuola per pirati; insegna la pirateria disinteressatamente e senza uno stipendio adeguato. Un Libero Amatore è peggio di un dissoluto. Perché un dissoluto è serio e temerario perfino nel suo più breve amore; mentre un Libero Amatore è cauto e irresponsabile perfino nella sua più lunga devozione. Odio il dubbio moderno perché è pericoloso.”
“Vuoi dire pericoloso per la morale,” disse con voce di meravigliosa dolcezza. “Immagino che tu abbia ragione. Ma perché ti importa della morale?”
Gli lanciai una rapida occhiata al viso. Aveva sporto il collo, come aveva l’abitudine di fare; e così aveva portato bruscamente il viso nella luce del falò dal basso, come un volto alla ribalta. Il suo lungo mento e i suoi alti zigomi erano illuminati infernalmente da sotto; sicché pareva un demonio che fissa in giù dentro la fossa fiammeggiante. Ebbi un’insensata sensazione di essere tentato in un deserto; e proprio mentre indugiavo un getto di rosse scintille scoppiò accanto.
“Non sono splendide quelle scintille?” dissi.
“Sì,” rispose.
“That is all that I ask you to admit,” said I. “Give me those few red specks and I will deduce Christian morality. Once I thought like you, that one’s pleasure in a flying spark was a thing that could come and go with that spark. Once I thought that the delight was as free as the fire. Once I thought that red star we see was alone in space. But now I know that the red star is only on the apex of an invisible pyramid of virtues. That red fire is only the flower on a stalk of living habits, which you cannot see. Only because your mother made you say ‘Thank you’ for a bun are you now able to thank Nature or chaos for those red stars of an instant or for the white stars of all time. Only because you were humble before fireworks on the fifth of November do you now enjoy any fireworks that you chance to see. You only like them being red because you were told about the blood of the martyrs; you only like them being bright because brightness is a glory. That flame flowered out of virtues, and it will fade with virtues. Seduce a woman, and that spark will be less bright. Shed blood, and that spark will be less red. Be really bad, and they will be to you like the spots on a wall-paper.”
He had a horrible fairness of the intellect that made me despair of his soul. A common, harmless atheist would have denied that religion produced humility or humility a simple joy: but he admitted both. He only said, “But shall I not find in evil a life of its own? Granted that for every woman I ruin one of those red sparks will go out: will not the expanding pleasure of ruin …”
“Do you see that fire ?” I asked. “If we had a real fighting democracy, some one would burn you in it; like the devil-worshipper that you are.”
“Perhaps,” he said, in his tired, fair way. “Only what you call evil I call good.”
He went down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the steps swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my hat in the low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his voice again, but the words were inaudible. I stopped, startled: then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his associates saying, “Nobody can possibly know.” And then I heard those two or three words which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I heard the Diabolist say, “I tell you I have done everything else. If I do that I shan’t know the difference between right and wrong.” I rushed out without daring to pause; and as I passed the fire I did not know whether it was hell or the furious love of God.
I have since heard that he died: it may be said, I think, that he committed suicide; though he did it with tools of pleasure, not with tools of pain. God help him, I know the road he went; but I have never known, or even dared to think, what was that place at which he stopped and refrained.
(from Tremendous Trifles, 1909)
“È tutto ciò che ti chiedo di ammettere,” dissi. “Concedimi quei pochi punti rossi e da essi dedurrò la morale cristiana. Un tempo pensavo come te, che il piacere provato in una scintilla volante fosse cosa che poteva andare e venire con quella scintilla. Un tempo pensavo che quel diletto fosse libero come il fuoco. Un tempo pensavo che la stella rossa che vediamo fosse sola nello spazio. Ma ora so che la stella rossa è soltanto sull’apice di un’invisibile piramide di virtù. Quel fuoco rosso è soltanto il fiore su uno stelo di abitudini viventi, che tu non puoi vedere. Solo perché tua madre ti fece dire ‘Grazie’ per un dolcetto sei ora capace di ringraziare la Natura o il caos per quelle rosse stelle d’un istante o per le bianche stelle di tutto il tempo. Solo perché fosti umile davanti ai fuochi d’artificio del cinque di novembre puoi ora godere di ogni fuoco che ti càpiti di vedere. Ti piacciono rossi solo perché ti fu raccontato del sangue dei martiri; ti piacciono splendenti solo perché lo splendore è una gloria. Quella fiamma fiorì dalle virtù, e con le virtù svanirà. Seduci una donna, e quella scintilla sarà meno luminosa. Versa sangue, e quella scintilla sarà meno rossa. Sii davvero malvagio, e ti saranno come le macchie su una carta da parati.”
Aveva un’orribile lealtà d’intelletto che mi faceva disperare della sua anima. Un ateo comune e innocuo avrebbe negato che la religione producesse umiltà, o l’umiltà una gioia semplice: ma egli ammetteva entrambe. Diceva soltanto: “Ma non troverò forse nel male una vita tutta sua? Ammesso che per ogni donna che rovino una di quelle scintille rosse si spegnerà: non crescerà forse il piacere della rovina …”
“Vedi quel fuoco?” chiesi. “Se avessimo una vera democrazia battagliera, qualcuno ti brucerebbe in esso; come l’adoratore del demonio che sei.”
“Forse,” disse, nel suo modo stanco e leale. “Solo che ciò che tu chiami male io lo chiamo bene.”
Discese i grandi gradini solo, e sentii come se volessi che i gradini fossero spazzati e ripuliti. Lo seguii più tardi, e mentre andavo a cercare il mio cappello nel basso, buio corridoio dove era appeso, udii d’improvviso la sua voce di nuovo, ma le parole erano inudibili. Mi fermai, trasalendo: poi udii la voce di uno dei più vili tra i suoi sodali dire, “Nessuno può mai saperlo.” E poi udii quelle due o tre parole che ricordo in ogni sillaba e non posso dimenticare. Udii il Diabolista dire: “Ti dico che ho fatto già tutto il resto. Se faccio quello, non conoscerò più la differenza tra il bene e il male.” Mi precipitai fuori senza osar fermarmi; e passando accanto al fuoco non sapevo se fosse l’inferno o il furioso amore di Dio.
Ho poi saputo che è morto: si può dire, credo, che si sia suicidato; benché lo abbia fatto con strumenti di piacere, non con strumenti di dolore. Dio lo aiuti, conosco la strada che percorse; ma non ho mai saputo, né osato pensare, quale fosse quel luogo al quale si fermò e si trattenne.
(da Tremendous Trifles, 1909)