VII The Parable of Mr. Poeta and Mr. Lector
Mr. Poeta was a child of impulse, and though not really a very careful student of Chaucer himself, was incensed one day at reading a literary article by an old schoolfellow called Lector, patronizing the poet in an impudent way and showing at the same time a great ignorance of his best work. But instead of taking the more direct and prosaic course of writing a letter of protest to the review which printed the article, or of directly giving the author a piece of his mind, he improvised a complicated plot for the young man’s correction.
On the following day he invited Mr. Lector to supper at his home and spent a busy morning making preparations. He draped the dining-room walls with crape, took up the carpet, and removed all the furniture except the table and two massive chairs which were finally drawn up to a meal of bread, cheese and water. When supper-time arrived and with it Mr. Lector, Mr. Poeta was discovered sitting in deep dejection in a window seat with his face buried in his hands; he would not notice his guest’s arrival for a full minute. Mr. Lector, embarrassed by the strangeness of his reception (for getting no answer to his knock at the door he had forced his way in), was now definitely alarmed by Mr. Poeta’s nervous gestures, desultory conversation and his staring eyes perpetually turning to a great rusty scimitar hanging on a nail above the mantelpiece. There was no attendance, nor any knife or plate on the board. The bread was stale, the cheese hard, and no sooner had Mr. Lector raised a glass of water to his lips than his host dashed it from his hands and with a bellow of rage sprang across the table. Mr. Lector, saw him seize the scimitar and flourish it around his head, so for want of any weapon of defence, the unfortunate young man reacted to terror-stricken flight. He darted from the room and heard the blade whistle through the air behind him.
Out of an open window he jumped and into a small enclosed yard; with the help of a handy rainwater tub he climbed the opposite wall, then dashed down a pathway through a shrubbery and finding the front door of a deserted cottage standing open, rushed in and upstairs, then breathlessly flinging into an empty room at the stairhead, slammed the door.
By so slamming the door he had locked it and on recovering his presence of mind found himself a close prisoner, for the only window was stoutly barred and the door lock was too massive to break. Here then, he stayed in confinement for three days, suffering severely until released by an accomplice of Mr. Poeta, who affected to be much surprised at finding him there and even threatened an action for trespass. But cold, hungry and thirsty, Mr. Lector had still had for companion in his misery a coverless copy of Chaucer which he found lying in the grate and which he read through from beginning to end with great enjoyment, thereupon reconsidering his previous estimate of the poet’s greatness.
But he never realized that every step he had taken had been predetermined by the supposed maniac and that once frightened off his balance, he had reacted according to plan. Mr. Poeta did not need to pursue him over the wall or even to go any further than the dining-room door; he counted on the all-or-none principle of reaction to danger finishing the job for him. So out at the window went Mr. Lector and every recourse offered for escape he accepted unquestioningly. Mr. Poeta knew well enough that Mr. Lector would eventually treasure that copy of Chaucer prepared for him, as a souvenir of his terrible experience, that he would have it rebound and adopt the poet as a “discovery” of his own.
The reader in interpreting this parable, must not make too close a comparison of motives; the process is all that is intended to show. The poet, once emotion has suggested a scheme of work, goes over the ground with minute care and makes everything sure, so that when his poem is presented to the reader, the latter is thrown off his balance temporarily by the novelty of the ideas involved. He has no critical weapons at his command, so he must follow the course which the poet has mapped out for him. He is carried away in spite of himself and though the actual words do not in themselves express all the meaning which the poet manages to convey (Mr. Poeta, as has been said, did not pursue) yet the reader on recovering from the first excitement finds the implied conclusion laid for him to discover, and flattering himself that he has reached it independently, finally carries it off as his own. Even where a conclusion is definitely expressed in a poem the reader often deceives himself into saying, “I have often thought that before, but never so clearly,” when as a matter of fact he has just been unconsciously translating the poet’s experience into terms of his own, and finding the formulated conclusion sound, imagines that the thought is originally his.