Nyolcadik fejezet

The "woman" in literature and art.

The Author learns in what relation the oihas and the bulloks stand to one another.

The Author's own original discoveries upon this question...

It was in these days, if I remember rightly (for in the ordering of time within this narrative I am obliged to rely upon memory alone, seeing that down there at the bottom of the sea it was not in my power to make notes, for want of suitable writing implements), that Opula first inquired after the significance of the word and the notion of "marriage," in the sense that word bears upon dry land.

For this word occurred often in my discourse, and on one occasion I pronounced it with so much sorrow (I cannot too often remind the reader that the oiha tongue consists wholly of interjections) that I awakened the attention and the pity of my mistress.

After a brief hesitation I perceived that it would be best to explain by example; and for this example my own person offered itself most conveniently.

Among those of my acquaintance, in the days when I yet lived at home, it was universally allowed that I lived in a marriage exemplary according to the temper and spirit of the age; this marriage was the crowning of a happy and fortunate love, and I stood in the repute of an enviable husband, possessed of a young and handsome wife, for whose hand, in her time, wealthy and considerable men had contended.

I told her, then, that I had been a young man full of ardor and talent, possessed by a burning faith, a soul called to all that is fair and good.

The future hovered before me as a kind of marvelous possibility; I felt that I might move mountains, only to discover in their place unknown springs, from which happiness and knowledge should flow, a wondrous power that would decide the fate of the whole human race and multiply its significance a hundredfold.

I knew not yet what awaited me, but the holy trinity of the fair, the good, and the true encouraged me to believe that I should attain that clarity, that fullness of life, that highest degree from which I might look about me as a god: I should become a creating and fashioning god, no plaything of fate and nature, but their governor.

It was at this time that I became acquainted with her who was afterward my wife, who then gave direction and substance to my scattered imaginings and desires.

She was then very young, and I a poor young man without property.

I resolved to make her my own, and she, divining my intention, turned all the creative force and power of her beauty, selflessly, to the spurring on of my strength and perseverance, becoming that encouraging vision of a dream which, in hours of despondency, lifted me up and urged me on to action.

Breaking with childish longings and idle reverie, I enrolled at the university, and before long obtained my diploma as a surgeon.

Never shall I forget that happy moment when, with flushed cheeks and in transports of joy, I showed her the document: the fruit of five years of unremitting labor and privation.

A sweet kiss, an encouraging look, was my reward — never in my life was I so well content.

Before long I obtained a post: I entered into partnership with a colleague, we founded a surgical establishment, and I came into possession of a certain sufficient sum, which rendered marriage possible to me.

The happy weeks of our betrothal I then endeavored to explain to Opula, with the most varied exclamations — the preparation for the furnishing of our family nest, our planning together, the intimate chatter over what manner of thing the bedchamber should be, the great standing mirror, the dressing-gown, the crystal flask of cologne water, and so forth.

At our wedding my wife dazzled all present with her beauty: everyone congratulated me upon the treasure I had come into possession of, and I happily vowed that I should hold her in due esteem.

After this I painted for my mistress a picture of a single day of married life.

At the sound of the alarm clock's striking I rise softly, that I may not disturb my slumbering wife; on tiptoe I steal out to my study, where my manservant waits to help me on with my shoes.

I breakfast, and hasten to the clinic — my forenoon passes in diligent labor, and it is only in the noon hours that I have time enough to discharge my social obligations, that I may visit some few of the political societies of which I am a member.

Going home, I stop at the shop, and purchase for my wife those articles whose list she has drawn up for me the evening before — for myself, it is my manservant who is accustomed to purchase.

Meanwhile my wife has risen, dressed herself, attended to my children, and driven out upon the promenade, that she might satisfy the demands of our social standing — which requires that the woman show herself and her attire, the better to emphasize her husband's pecuniary condition and distinguished rank.

My manservant and I arrive home at the same moment: my manservant helps me off with my coat, and I do the same office for my wife, who has returned home this very moment, flushed, and gratefully extends her hand to be kissed, in her joy at having pleased everyone.

She changes her attire for dinner — meanwhile I pour the wine into the glasses, and when she enters, I rise, that I may push the chair beneath her, while my manservant does the same office for me with my own chair.

There are always one or two guests at table, who learn good manners from me, and envy me that I may wait upon so handsome and so distinguished a wife.

After dinner my wife reposes a little, and I attend to my correspondence.

My medical consultations follow, and when these are concluded, I look in a while at the club, where we occupy ourselves with weighty questions of party politics: there is always some matter that renders these questions of the moment — economic or commercial disputes with other countries, which might furnish occasion for a clash, should we be unable, in some other manner, to defend the interests of our country and of citizens such as myself.

My wife meanwhile visits her lady friends, and calls upon her dressmaker; she is untiring in that endeavor which constitutes the woman's most sacred duty — to be always fair and desirable, the spur and the reward of the man's activity.

In the evening, when we are left to ourselves, I may then enjoy the aforesaid reward, whose sweetness I had not much need to explain to Opula — a brief and happy exclamation sufficed.

I told my mistress further that my happiness was not, of course, always undisturbed.

My wife was often out of humor, and cast down in spirit.

There were bold men who, envying my happiness, endeavored to win her away from me.

Their design they sought to accomplish by flattery, and by alluring promises of a great love and of sundry other advantages.

My wife was often sorely tempted, and I suffered terribly.

But in the end it was I who always prevailed, and my tempters were obliged to own that in that contest which a Darwin, a Weininger, a Ferenc Molnár, an Endre Ady have described and proclaimed to be the greatest and most dreadful of all contests, I am the stronger.

I had also one or two duels, in which for the most part it was I who wounded my adversaries — as a surgeon, I may say the wounds were tolerably grave, one indeed proving fatal.

I spoke of how, in these difficult times, I much occupied myself with that great question which most occupies our own age as well: the problem of woman.

I read a great deal, and went often to the theater, as to the forum most stirring, and ever timely, upon the politics of the human soul.

Being a man well versed in polite letters, I sketched, in ample extracts, the greatest poetic achievements of our century and of the century past, and their lessons — the works of men of genius, from which that mystery we call woman may be made perfectly known.

I spoke of those great men who portrayed woman through the keen lens of manly morality and higher philosophy, and of those others who, desiring to see only the coarse and simple facts of carnal love, observed and depicted her as it were with the naked eye, and thus with a less perfect instrument.

Under this one heading came Zola and the Marquis de Sade together, naturalism and pornography alike (of this latter I spoke at some length, touching upon particulars which, out of decency, I cannot here repeat) — and into a separate and distinguished company fell those appointed dissectors of the secret of the female soul — a Flaubert, a Stendhal, a Bataille.

I set forth briefly the substance of a whole host of modern dramas: I paraded before her Ibsen, Strindberg, Maeterlinck, Gerhart Hauptmann, Shaw, and Bernstein.

Of the drama of adultery I spoke apart, and of the manner in which, now in jest (the triangle!) and now in tragedy, they set down the dreadful consequences of woman's fickle character upon the fate of man.

Whereupon Opula unexpectedly interposed, and put to me that astonishing question, what manner of undergarment and outer garment Strindberg had worn — and what Duse had worn at the dress rehearsal of the play called The Lady of the Camellias.

She desired that I should set this down in greater detail, for the rest of my discourse she could have understood in two words, whereas for this she stood in need of more exact particulars.

Somewhat astonished, I obeyed: I told her that I might dispose of Strindberg's toilet briefly — the men of Europe wear, in the main, what is well-nigh a uniform, a covering of simple cut, whose office it is to conceal the male nakedness and the lines of the body, in the most economical manner possible: to this end five tubes serve us: into one we thrust our waist, into two our arms, and into two our legs.

These tubes, made of grey or black cloth (never of any other color), are sewn together into two pieces, a coat and a pair of breeches, in such a manner that the two natural dividing-lines of the naked body, the waist and the knee, may not assert themselves.

This garb is worn by every man in Europe, and the aforesaid Strindberg wore it too, so long as he lived, though I do not understand in what manner this pertains to the subject.

A harder task it is to answer the second question — for our ladies go about in the most varied and the richest of raiment: the purpose of these garments, precisely as in the animal kingdom, is twofold: in small part they serve as protection against the weather, but their chief office is that peculiar assertion of woman in the feminine sense, the seduction of man, the provocation of man's desires, in such manner that the woman may produce the effect of a fragrant flower ripe for the plucking, or still more, of a desirable fruit, and so enhance her worth in the eyes of the man.