miércoles, enero 05, 2005
from Gautier's preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin
There are two sorts of utility, and the meaning of the vocable is always a relative one. What is useful for one is not useful to another. You are a cobbler, I am a poet. It is useful to me to have my first verse rhyme with my second. A rhyming dictionary is of great utility to me; you do not want it to cobble an old pair fo boots, and it is only right to say that a shoe-knife would not be of great service to me in making an ode. To this you will object that a cobbler is far above a poet, and that people can do without the one better than without the other. Without affecting to disparage the illustrious profession of cobbler, which I honour equally with that of constitutional monarch, I humbly confess that I would rather have my shoe unstitched than my verse badly rhymed, and that I should be more willing to go without boots than without poems. Scarcely ever going out and walking more skillfully with my head than with my feet, I wear out fewer shoes than a virtuous Republican, who is always hastening from one minister to another in the hope of having some place flung to him.
I know that there are some who prefer mills to churches, and bread for the body to that for the soul. To such I have nothing to say. They deserve to be economists in this world and also in the next....
.... to prevent one's-self from dying is not living; and I don not see in what respect a town organized after the utilitarian fashion would be more agreeable to dwell in than the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise.
Nothing that is beautiful is indispensable to life. You might suppress flowers, and the world would not suffer materially; yet who would wish that there were no more flowers? I would rather give up potatoes than roses...
There are two sorts of utility, and the meaning of the vocable is always a relative one. What is useful for one is not useful to another. You are a cobbler, I am a poet. It is useful to me to have my first verse rhyme with my second. A rhyming dictionary is of great utility to me; you do not want it to cobble an old pair fo boots, and it is only right to say that a shoe-knife would not be of great service to me in making an ode. To this you will object that a cobbler is far above a poet, and that people can do without the one better than without the other. Without affecting to disparage the illustrious profession of cobbler, which I honour equally with that of constitutional monarch, I humbly confess that I would rather have my shoe unstitched than my verse badly rhymed, and that I should be more willing to go without boots than without poems. Scarcely ever going out and walking more skillfully with my head than with my feet, I wear out fewer shoes than a virtuous Republican, who is always hastening from one minister to another in the hope of having some place flung to him.
I know that there are some who prefer mills to churches, and bread for the body to that for the soul. To such I have nothing to say. They deserve to be economists in this world and also in the next....
.... to prevent one's-self from dying is not living; and I don not see in what respect a town organized after the utilitarian fashion would be more agreeable to dwell in than the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise.
Nothing that is beautiful is indispensable to life. You might suppress flowers, and the world would not suffer materially; yet who would wish that there were no more flowers? I would rather give up potatoes than roses...
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