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The Dance of the Thinker
- The Feminist Press
- Chapter
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tHe dAnce of tHe tHinker it began in the days of the great disasters, when hopelessness and despondency covered the land like manure and brought forth blossoms of despair.there was nothing then to strengthen the spirit of man. only he, the thinker, rose up like a lion to compose his dissertation on the subject of despair. He discovered double meanings and hidden meanings in destruction, and his thoughts reached extraordinary heights of subtlety. from early in the morning he scratched his letters in tortuous lines, and when evening fell he swept up the pieces of paper and stuck them, one on top of the other, onto a tall spike. the cries of lamentation of the afflicted beat against his chamber door. But under his pen they were transformed into profound words.At first they were the voices of strangers , and later the cries of his father and mother, his wife and his children—which in the end died down. one by one. then,when silence fell outside,his thoughts sailed onto new seas. Heroically he crossed the waters, borne forth on 169 the sharpness of his sentences.like delicate bridges they led him with admirable precision along the razor edge between abyss and extinction.And thus he,who had never learned to steer a boat, succeeded in pulling the ropes of the eternally billowing sail, balancing his body in a marvelous rhythm on the planks, as in a dance. When after a while he raised his head, he no longer saw the shores from which he had sailed. the waves had carried him to other seas, opposite other shores, where people lived who did not know that the planks of his raft were the beams of ruined houses, and the cloth of his sail—the torn clothes of the dead. When currents swept him toward one of those shores, the natives of the place would blow festive trumpets, hang lanterns of colored paper on the streets descending to the sea, and come out in their multitudes. for his part, he exerted himself to entertain the distant crowds. for after all it was for their sakes that he continued to polish the dance of his thoughts. from time to time he would improve it by adding an unexpected leap or a special glide. And when they, too, seemed insufficient to him, he would go so far in his innovations as to courageously tear a plank or two from the waves, or, in a burst of emotion, wave the rags of his sail. And thus, between one movement and the next, tottering backward and forward, his meditations sang, “i am sadness, i am joy, i am perfect despair! even if the sea dries 170 The Dance of theThinker [54.152.5.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:40 GMT) up,even if the land is laid waste,i shall go on dancing,i shall go on gliding on high. i am the irrefutable argument!” With increasing daring he would rise and bend, retreat and approach.With pure spirit his body ruled the waves. it seemed to him that he could hear the cries of admiration from the shores, “See what a man of spirit! He has striven with matter and prevailed! Man has never achieved such transcendence!A spiritual man! A hero of the spirit!” But when the wind scattered the rags of his sail, and the last of the planks gave way to the churning waves,the portly body of the thinker fell into the water. He beat the waves with practiced gestures of despair.And thus, quivering with panic, he was swept back to shore. A group of boys playing on the sand mistook him for a heavy sea beast with a man’s head. full of naughty tricks they prodded him with sticks and pushed him back into the waves.they did not stop until he almost drowned.When he escaped them at last, he kept on flapping his arms but did not succeed in taking off, and his legs, no longer used to walking, gave way beneath his weight. With teetering steps he approached the esplanade from which he could hear the sound of trumpets and cheering crowds.they must have congregated there to honor the dance—he hurried. But pushing his way under the colorful paper lanterns, he heard the weeping and lamentation of the stricken natives who had gathered there to accompany their dead. on the edges of the crowd drunks capered sardonically, throwing...