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349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
221
Thoroughly
disgruntled
I
said
at
last:
"If
only
we
had
the
courage
of
our
innate
madness,
the
courage
of
children,
lunatics
and
men
of
genius,
we
should
get
some
stamp
paper,
and
stick
a
square
beneath
each
photograph
with
our
comments."
Baudelaire
describes
how
he
dismissed
a
glass
vendor
because
he
had
no
coloured
glasses--"glasses
of
rose
and
crimson,
magical
glasses,
glasses
of
Paradise"--and,
stepping
out
on
to
his
balcony,
threw
a
flowerpot
down
on
the
tray
of
glasses
as
soon
as
the
man
issued
into
the
street
below,
shouting
down
furiously,
"The
Life
Beautiful!
The
Life
Beautiful."
Bergson's
theory
is
that
laughter
is
a
"social
gesture"
so
that
when
a
man
in
a
top
hat
treads
on
a
banana
skin
and
slips
down
we
laugh
at
him
for
his
lack
"of
living
pliableness."
At
this
rate
we
ought
to
be
profoundly
solemn
at
Baudelaire's
action
and
moreover
a
"social
gesture"
is
more
likely
to
be
an
expression
of
society's
will
to
conformity
in
all
its
members
rather
than
any
dangerous
"living
pliableness."
Society
hates
living
pliableness
and
prefers
drill,
routine,
orthodoxy,
conformity.
It
hated
the
living
pliableness
of
Turner,
of
Keats,
of
Samuel
Butler
and
a
hundred
others.
But
to
return
to
lunacy:
the
truth
is
we
are
all
mad
fundamentally
and
are
merely
schooled
into
sanity
by
education.
Pascal
wrote:
"Men
are
so
necessarily
mad
that
not
to
be
mad
would
amount
to
another
form
of
madness."
And,
in
fact,
the
man
who
has
succeeded
in
extirpating
this
intoxication
of
life
is
usually
said
to
be
"temporarily
insane."
In
those
melancholy
interludes
of
sanity
when
the
mind
becomes
rationalised
we
all
know
how
much
we
have
been
deceived
and
gulled,
what
an
extraordinary
spectacle
humanity
presents
rushing
on
in
noise
and
tumult
no
one
knows
why
or
whither.
Look
at
that
tailor
in
his
shop--why
does
he
do
it?
Some
day
in
the
future
he
thinks
he
will....
But
the
day
never
comes
and
he
is
nevertheless
content.
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