The Telegraph Poles
MY friend and I were walking in one of those wastes of pine-wood which make inland seas of solitude in every part of Western Europe; which have the true terror of a desert, since they are uniform, and so one may lose one’s way in them. Stiff, straight, and similar, stood up all around us the pines of the wood, like the pikes of a silent mutiny. There is a truth in talking of the variety of Nature; but I think that Nature often shows her chief strangeness in her sameness. There is weird rhythm in this very repetition; it is as if the earth were resolved to repeat a single shape until the shape shall turn terrible.
Have you ever tried the experiment of saying some plain word, such as “dog,” thirty times? By the thirtieth time it has become a word like “snark” or “pobble.” It does not become tame, it becomes wild, by repetition. In the end a dog walks about as startling and undecipherable as Leviathan or Croquemitaine.
It may be that this explains the repetitions in Nature; it may be for this reason that there are so many million leaves and pebbles. Perhaps they are not repeated so that they may grow familiar. Perhaps they are repeated only in the hope that they may at last grow unfamiliar. Perhaps a man is not startled at the first cat he sees, but jumps into the air with surprise at the seventy-ninth cat. Perhaps he has to pass through thousands of pine trees before he finds the one that is really a pine tree. However, this may be, there is something singularly thrilling, even something urgent and intolerant, about the endless forest repetitions; there is the hint of something like madness in that musical monotony of the pines.
I said something like this to my friend; and he answered with sardonic truth, “Ah, you wait till we come to a telegraph post.”
My friend was right, as he occasionally is in our discussions, especially upon points of fact. We had crossed the pine forest by one of its paths which happened to follow the wires of the provincial telegraphy; and though the poles occurred at long intervals they made a difference when they came. The instant we came to the straight pole we could see that the pines were not really straight. It was like a hundred straight lines drawn with schoolboy pencils all brought to judgment suddenly by one straight line drawn with a ruler. All the amateur lines seemed to reel to right and left. A moment before I could have sworn they stood as straight as lances; now I could see them curve and waver everywhere, like scimitars and yataghans. Compared with the telegraph post the pines were crooked-and alive. That lonely vertical rod at once deformed and enfranchised the forest. It tangled it all together and yet made it free, like any grotesque undergrowth of oak or holly.
“Yes,” said my gloomy friend, answering my thoughts. “You don’t know what a wicked shameful thing straightness is if you think these trees are straight. You never will know till your precious intellectual civilization builds a forty-mile forest of telegraph poles.”
We had started walking from our temporary home later in the day than we intended; and the long afternoon was already lengthening itself out into a yellow evening when we came out of the forest on to the hills above a strange town or village, of which the lights had already begun to glitter in the darkening valley. The change had already happened which is the test and definition of evening, I mean that while the sun seemed still as bright, the earth was growing blacker against it, especially at the edges, he hills and the pine-tops. This brought out yet more clearly the owlish secrecy of pine-woods; and my friend cast a regretful glance at them as he came out under the sky. Then he turned to the view in front; and, as it happened, one of the telegraph posts stood up in front of him in the last sunlight. It was no longer crossed and softened by the more delicate lines of pine wood; it stood up ugly, arbitrary, and angular as any crude figure in geometry. My friend stopped, pointing his stick at it, and all his anarchic philosophy rushed to his lips.
“Demon,” he said to me briefly, “behold your work. That place of proud trees behind us is what the world was before you civilized men, Christians or democrats or the rest, came to make it dull with your dreary rules of morals and equality. In the silent fight of that forest, tree fights speechless against tree, branch against branch. And the upshot of that dumb battle is inequality-and beauty. Now lift up your eyes and look at equality and ugliness. See how regularly the white buttons are arranged on that black stick, and defend your dogmas if you dare.”
“Is that telegraph post so much a symbol of democracy?” I asked. “I fancy that while three men have made the telegraph to get dividends, about a thousand men have preserved the forest to cut wood. But if the telegraph pole is hideous (as I admit) it is not due to doctrine but rather to commercial anarchy. If any one had a doctrine about a telegraph pole it might be carved in ivory and decked with gold. Modern things are ugly, because modern men are careless, not because they are careful.”
“No,” answered my friend with his eye on the end of a splendid and sprawling sunset, “there is something intrinsically deadening about the very idea of a doctrine. A straight line is always ugly. Beauty is always crooked. These rigid posts at regular intervals are ugly because they are carrying across the world the real message of democracy.”
“At this moment,” I answered, “they are probably carrying across the world the message, ‘Buy Bulgarian Rails.’ They are probably the prompt communication between some two of the wealthiest and wickedest of His children with whom God has ever had patience. No; these telegraph poles are ugly and detestable, they are inhuman and indecent. But their baseness lies in their privacy, not in their publicity. That black stick with white buttons is not the creation of the soul of a multitude. It is the mad creation of the souls of two millionaires.”
“At least you have to explain,” answered my friend gravely, “how it is that the hard democratic doctrine and the hard telegraphic outline have appeared together; you have … But bless my soul, we must be getting home. I had no idea it was so late. Let me see, I think this is our way through the wood. Come, let us both curse the telegraph post for entirely different reasons and get home before it is dark.”
We did not get home before it was dark. For one reason or another we had underestimated the swiftness of twilight and the suddenness of night, especially in the threading of thick woods. When my friend, after the first five minutes’ march, had fallen over a log, and I, ten minutes after, had stuck nearly to the knees in mire, we began to have some suspicion of our direction. At last my friend said, in a low, husky voice:
“I’m afraid we’re on the wrong path. It’s pitch dark.”
“I thought we went the right way,” I said, tentatively.
“Well,” he said; and then, after a long pause, “I can’t see any telegraph poles. I’ve been looking for them.”
“So have I,” I said. “They’re so straight.”
We groped away for about two hours of darkness in the thick of the fringe of trees which seemed to dance round us in derision. Here and there, however, it was possible to trace the outline of something just too erect and rigid to be a pine tree. By these we finally felt our way home, arriving in a cold green twilight before dawn.
The Telegraph Poles
MY friend and I were walking in one of those wastes of pine-wood which make inland seas of solitude in every part of Western Europe; which have the true terror of a desert, since they are uniform, and so one may lose one’s way in them. Stiff, straight, and similar, stood up all around us the pines of the wood, like the pikes of a silent mutiny. There is a truth in talking of the variety of Nature; but I think that Nature often shows her chief strangeness in her sameness. There is weird rhythm in this very repetition; it is as if the earth were resolved to repeat a single shape until the shape shall turn terrible.
Have you ever tried the experiment of saying some plain word, such as “dog,” thirty times? By the thirtieth time it has become a word like “snark” or “pobble.” It does not become tame, it becomes wild, by repetition. In the end a dog walks about as startling and undecipherable as Leviathan or Croquemitaine.
It may be that this explains the repetitions in Nature; it may be for this reason that there are so many million leaves and pebbles. Perhaps they are not repeated so that they may grow familiar. Perhaps they are repeated only in the hope that they may at last grow unfamiliar. Perhaps a man is not startled at the first cat he sees, but jumps into the air with surprise at the seventy-ninth cat. Perhaps he has to pass through thousands of pine trees before he finds the one that is really a pine tree. However, this may be, there is something singularly thrilling, even something urgent and intolerant, about the endless forest repetitions; there is the hint of something like madness in that musical monotony of the pines.
I said something like this to my friend; and he answered with sardonic truth, “Ah, you wait till we come to a telegraph post.”
My friend was right, as he occasionally is in our discussions, especially upon points of fact. We had crossed the pine forest by one of its paths which happened to follow the wires of the provincial telegraphy; and though the poles occurred at long intervals they made a difference when they came. The instant we came to the straight pole we could see that the pines were not really straight. It was like a hundred straight lines drawn with schoolboy pencils all brought to judgment suddenly by one straight line drawn with a ruler. All the amateur lines seemed to reel to right and left. A moment before I could have sworn they stood as straight as lances; now I could see them curve and waver everywhere, like scimitars and yataghans. Compared with the telegraph post the pines were crooked-and alive. That lonely vertical rod at once deformed and enfranchised the forest. It tangled it all together and yet made it free, like any grotesque undergrowth of oak or holly.
“Yes,” said my gloomy friend, answering my thoughts. “You don’t know what a wicked shameful thing straightness is if you think these trees are straight. You never will know till your precious intellectual civilization builds a forty-mile forest of telegraph poles.”
We had started walking from our temporary home later in the day than we intended; and the long afternoon was already lengthening itself out into a yellow evening when we came out of the forest on to the hills above a strange town or village, of which the lights had already begun to glitter in the darkening valley. The change had already happened which is the test and definition of evening, I mean that while the sun seemed still as bright, the earth was growing blacker against it, especially at the edges, he hills and the pine-tops. This brought out yet more clearly the owlish secrecy of pine-woods; and my friend cast a regretful glance at them as he came out under the sky. Then he turned to the view in front; and, as it happened, one of the telegraph posts stood up in front of him in the last sunlight. It was no longer crossed and softened by the more delicate lines of pine wood; it stood up ugly, arbitrary, and angular as any crude figure in geometry. My friend stopped, pointing his stick at it, and all his anarchic philosophy rushed to his lips.
“Demon,” he said to me briefly, “behold your work. That place of proud trees behind us is what the world was before you civilized men, Christians or democrats or the rest, came to make it dull with your dreary rules of morals and equality. In the silent fight of that forest, tree fights speechless against tree, branch against branch. And the upshot of that dumb battle is inequality-and beauty. Now lift up your eyes and look at equality and ugliness. See how regularly the white buttons are arranged on that black stick, and defend your dogmas if you dare.”
“Is that telegraph post so much a symbol of democracy?” I asked. “I fancy that while three men have made the telegraph to get dividends, about a thousand men have preserved the forest to cut wood. But if the telegraph pole is hideous (as I admit) it is not due to doctrine but rather to commercial anarchy. If any one had a doctrine about a telegraph pole it might be carved in ivory and decked with gold. Modern things are ugly, because modern men are careless, not because they are careful.”
“No,” answered my friend with his eye on the end of a splendid and sprawling sunset, “there is something intrinsically deadening about the very idea of a doctrine. A straight line is always ugly. Beauty is always crooked. These rigid posts at regular intervals are ugly because they are carrying across the world the real message of democracy.”
I pali del telegrafo
Il mio amico e io camminavamo in una di quelle distese di pineta che formano mari interni di solitudine in ogni parte dell’Europa occidentale; che hanno il vero terrore di un deserto, poiché sono uniformi, e perciò vi si può smarrire la via. Rigidi, dritti e simili, si ergevano tutt’intorno a noi i pini del bosco, come le picche di un ammutinamento silenzioso. C’è una verità nel parlare della varietà della Natura; ma io penso che la Natura mostri spesso la sua più grande stranezza nella sua uniformità. C’è un ritmo arcano in questa stessa ripetizione; è come se la terra fosse decisa a ripetere un’unica forma finché la forma non diventi terribile.
Avete mai provato l’esperimento di dire una parola qualunque, come “cane”, trenta volte? Alla trentesima volta è diventata una parola come “snark” o “pobble”. Non diventa mansueta, diventa selvaggia, per ripetizione. Alla fine un cane si aggira sconcertante e indecifrabile come Leviatano o Croquemitaine.
Può darsi che questo spieghi le ripetizioni della Natura; può darsi che sia per questa ragione che vi sono tanti milioni di foglie e di ciottoli. Forse non sono ripetuti affinché diventino familiari. Forse sono ripetuti soltanto nella speranza che possano infine diventare non familiari. Forse un uomo non si spaventa al primo gatto che vede, ma balza in aria per la sorpresa al settantanovesimo gatto. Forse deve attraversare migliaia di pini prima di trovare quello che è davvero un pino. Comunque sia, c’è qualcosa di singolarmente emozionante, persino qualcosa di urgente e intollerante, in queste infinite ripetizioni della foresta; c’è il sentore di qualcosa come la follia in quella monotonia musicale dei pini.
Dissi qualcosa di simile al mio amico; ed egli rispose con sardonica verità: “Ah, aspetta di arrivare a un palo del telegrafo.”
Il mio amico aveva ragione, come talvolta gli capita nelle nostre discussioni, specialmente sui punti di fatto. Avevamo attraversato la pineta per uno dei suoi sentieri, che per caso seguiva i fili della telegrafia provinciale; e sebbene i pali ricorressero a lunghi intervalli, facevano una differenza quando comparivano. Nell’istante in cui giungemmo al palo diritto, potemmo vedere che i pini non erano affatto diritti. Era come cento linee diritte tracciate con matite da scolaretto tutte d’un tratto messe a giudizio da un’unica linea diritta tracciata con la riga. Tutte le linee dilettantesche parevano barcollare a destra e a sinistra. Un istante prima avrei giurato che stessero dritte come lance; ora potevo vederle curvarsi e vacillare dappertutto, come scimitarre e yatagani. In confronto al palo del telegrafo i pini erano storti… e vivi. Quella solitaria asta verticale insieme deformava e affrancava la foresta. La ingarbugliava tutta e nondimeno la rendeva libera, come un qualunque grottesco sottobosco di quercia o di agrifoglio.
“Sì”, disse il mio cupo amico, rispondendo ai miei pensieri. “Non sai che cosa scellerata e vergognosa sia la rettilineità, se credi che questi alberi siano dritti. Non lo saprai mai finché la tua preziosa civiltà intellettuale non costruirà una foresta di pali del telegrafo lunga sessanta chilometri.”
Avevamo iniziato a camminare dalla nostra casa provvisoria più tardi nel giorno di quanto intendessimo; e il lungo pomeriggio si andava già allungando in una sera dorata quando uscimmo dalla foresta sulle colline sopra una strana città o villaggio, le cui luci avevano già cominciato a scintillare nella valle che si oscurava. Era già avvenuto quel mutamento che è la prova e la definizione della sera, voglio dire che, mentre il sole sembrava ancora altrettanto luminoso, la terra si faceva più nera contro di esso, specialmente ai margini, le colline e le cime dei pini. Ciò metteva in risalto ancor più chiaramente la segretezza da civetta delle pinete; e il mio amico gettò loro uno sguardo di rimpianto mentre usciva sotto il cielo. Poi si volse verso il panorama davanti a sé; e, per caso, uno dei pali del telegrafo si ergeva davanti a lui nell’ultima luce del sole. Non era più attraversato e addolcito dalle linee più delicate del pineto; si ergeva brutto, arbitrario e angoloso come una qualunque rozza figura di geometria. Il mio amico si fermò, puntandovi contro il bastone, e tutta la sua anarchica filosofia gli salì alle labbra.
“Demone”, mi disse brevemente, “contempla l’opera tua. Quel luogo di alberi superbi dietro di noi è ciò che il mondo era prima che voi uomini civilizzati, cristiani o democratici o quel che siete, veniste a renderlo tetro con le vostre uggiose regole di morale e uguaglianza. Nella lotta silenziosa di quella foresta, albero combatte muto contro albero, ramo contro ramo. E l’esito di quella muta battaglia è disuguaglianza… e bellezza. Ora leva gli occhi e guarda l’uguaglianza e la bruttezza. Guarda con quanta regolarità i bottoni bianchi sono disposti su quel bastone nero, e difendi i tuoi dogmi se ne hai il coraggio.”
“È dunque tanto un simbolo di democrazia quel palo del telegrafo?” domandai. “Immagino che, mentre tre uomini hanno fatto il telegrafo per ricavarne dividendi, un migliaio circa di uomini hanno conservato la foresta per tagliar legna. Ma se il palo del telegrafo è orribile (come ammetto) ciò non è dovuto a una dottrina, bensì piuttosto all’anarchia commerciale. Se qualcuno avesse una dottrina su un palo del telegrafo, esso potrebbe essere intagliato nell’avorio e adorno d’oro. Le cose moderne sono brutte perché gli uomini moderni sono trascurati, non perché sono accurati.”
“No,” rispose il mio amico con l’occhio fisso all’estremità di uno splendido e dilagante tramonto, “vi è qualcosa di intrinsecamente mortifero nell’idea stessa di una dottrina. Una linea diritta è sempre brutta. La bellezza è sempre storta. Questi rigidi pali a intervalli regolari sono brutti perché stanno recando attraverso il mondo il vero messaggio della democrazia.”
“At this moment,” I answered, “they are probably carrying across the world the message, ‘Buy Bulgarian Rails.’ They are probably the prompt communication between some two of the wealthiest and wickedest of His children with whom God has ever had patience. No; these telegraph poles are ugly and detestable, they are inhuman and indecent. But their baseness lies in their privacy, not in their publicity. That black stick with white buttons is not the creation of the soul of a multitude. It is the mad creation of the souls of two millionaires.”
“At least you have to explain,” answered my friend gravely, “how it is that the hard democratic doctrine and the hard telegraphic outline have appeared together; you have … But bless my soul, we must be getting home. I had no idea it was so late. Let me see, I think this is our way through the wood. Come, let us both curse the telegraph post for entirely different reasons and get home before it is dark.”
We did not get home before it was dark. For one reason or another we had underestimated the swiftness of twilight and the suddenness of night, especially in the threading of thick woods. When my friend, after the first five minutes’ march, had fallen over a log, and I, ten minutes after, had stuck nearly to the knees in mire, we began to have some suspicion of our direction. At last my friend said, in a low, husky voice:
“I’m afraid we’re on the wrong path. It’s pitch dark.”
“I thought we went the right way,” I said, tentatively.
“Well,” he said; and then, after a long pause, “I can’t see any telegraph poles. I’ve been looking for them.”
“So have I,” I said. “They’re so straight.”
We groped away for about two hours of darkness in the thick of the fringe of trees which seemed to dance round us in derision. Here and there, however, it was possible to trace the outline of something just too erect and rigid to be a pine tree. By these we finally felt our way home, arriving in a cold green twilight before dawn.
«In questo momento», risposi, «stanno probabilmente recando per il mondo il messaggio: “Comprate Ferrovie Bulgare”. Sono probabilmente la pronta comunicazione fra due dei più ricchi e più malvagi fra quei Suoi figli con cui Dio abbia mai avuto pazienza. No; questi pali del telegrafo sono brutti e detestabili, sono disumani e indecenti. Ma la loro bassezza sta nella loro segretezza, non nella loro pubblicità. Quel bastone nero coi bottoni bianchi non è la creazione dell’anima di una moltitudine. È la folle creazione delle anime di due milionari.»
«Devi almeno spiegare», rispose il mio amico con gravità, «come mai la dura dottrina democratica e il duro profilo telegrafico siano comparsi insieme; tu hai… Ma perbacco, anima mia, dobbiamo tornare a casa. Non avevo idea che fosse così tardi. Vediamo, credo che la nostra via attraverso il bosco sia questa. Vieni, malediciamo entrambi il palo del telegrafo per ragioni del tutto diverse e torniamo a casa prima che faccia buio.»
Non tornammo a casa prima che facesse buio. Per una ragione o per l’altra avevamo sottostimato la rapidità del crepuscolo e la subitaneità della notte, specialmente nell’infilarsi tra fitti boschi. Quando il mio amico, dopo i primi cinque minuti di marcia, fu caduto su un tronco, e io, dieci minuti dopo, mi fui impantanato quasi fino alle ginocchia nel fango, cominciammo ad avere qualche sospetto sulla nostra direzione. Alfine il mio amico disse, con voce bassa e roca:
“Temo che siamo sul sentiero sbagliato. È buio pesto.”
“Credevo che avessimo preso la via giusta,” dissi, tentennando.
«Beh», disse; e poi, dopo una lunga pausa, «non riesco a vedere nessun palo del telegrafo. Li ho cercati.»
“Anch’io,” dissi. “Sono così diritti.”
Andammo tastoni per circa due ore di tenebra nel folto della frangia di alberi che parevano danzare intorno a noi in derisione. Qua e là, tuttavia, era possibile tracciare il profilo di qualcosa appena troppo eretto e rigido per essere un pino. Da questi trovammo alfine, a tentoni, la via verso casa, giungendo in un freddo verde crepuscolo prima dell’alba.