THE CASTING OF MAN
JEANNINE
HERRAULT
Saint Mande, France
If
the shadow of a man walking before the sun be the exact projection of his body,
are both the destiny of a man and the theatre of its accomplishment the exact
projection of his soul?
Were
the Greeks right to assert “character is fate”? Has a man ever worn a destiny
completely alien to that which even the most superficial observer may assess of
his person?
Were
I to point to Dick and describe Tom, none would really care to believe my tale.
Some strange impossibility in the situation described would no doubt betray me
as a liar. Beyond philosophy or reason we all instinctively accept some shadowy
connection between any individual and the outer circumstances which cling to
his person.
Is
fate come to us by heritage, unclaimed? Or otherwise, are we the weavers of its
mysterious design? Are we the makers of some mute message calling for
circumstances, and beckoning to each event in our lives? Shall we perceive
clearly each echo of the string of our actions, or rather only the faint
rumours of their sum? At limes not even the rumours of their sum for fear of
disturbing the action, for fear of weakening our energies as we attack a single
task, or disturbing them by pain. Is the thread rarely broken between a man’s
mind and his environment?
Shall
each cell of our flesh bear the winds and tearings of anger, or, on the
contrary, gather strength from the flame of our happiness? The infinitesimal
altering the infinitesimal. Shall we bear the wounds, or react and thus the
chain placed round our heart diminish our compassion some twenty years from now?
Shall then some beggar be sent away unserved, for reasons far anterior to his
visit?
Is the pattern woven in time and the
stitch done on the first day alters the stitch done on the last day?
When shall the ripples surface anew,
and Where? Are we a storage house of all our macbethian seeds? Does the rate of
their fertility elude us, but only the rate and not the flowering?
Life is the dance of Siva, the dance
of the universe. Are we all his dancers, willing or unwilling, and makers of our
dream? Shifting not wildly, but to secret order, rounded by a part, axed on a
present life coloured to our own style.
“Fatum”, Fate is man’s earliest
question, from the cradle, to the grave he accuses the gods, and the gods accuse
him in return. He oscillates from guilt to innocence, from innocence to guilt,
choosing, willingly or unwillingly, conscious or unknowing. Face to his
paradoxal secret he has a choice not only in action, a sorting of one deed from
the other by a difference in degree of virtue, but also a choice in attitudes
as events twist his days.
To Some physical blow a man may
react by anger or revolt, or rancour, or simply by crying helplessly. In a web
of witches do we imprison the particular music of each act and thought, until
once more expressed and erased, or will it remain graven in the secret tapistry
of our mind?
The writing, we are told, is left on
such wavelength of reality, finer than the finest atom and yet as real as the
atom, more potent yet infinitely smaller. As if our portraits were written best
and more conclusively in the holistic dimension, the whole more true than the sum
of its parts, and within them spelling out a new language.
Holistic is a term acceptable to
modern sciences. So our portrait grows inseparable from ourselves, so the
image, so the mirror, microscopic and tenacious. The aerial dwarf within us
mute, and yet governing and suggesting, and forcing. Shall we ever know for
certain of his nature, and of whom shall we learn of his long journey? He
travels in the unfathomable dimensions which modern research has learned to
construe in part?
Are we all but momentarily
concentrated energy, invisible, fluid as a breeze or a brook? If so we may
ponder over the illusionary importance of the dispute between those who assert the
world is real and those who contend the assertion. The dwarf in us dances
through.
Shall we speak to him? He is ourselves
and yet he might teach us much we ignore, had he a mortal tongue, thicker than his
promptings.
“Know thyself” pleaded Socrates, for
reasons deepest attainable by the human mind. By discovering the roots shall we
find the strength to change the flowers? At least shall we learn how to tend
the flower? We shall know her food best and alter her colour and her scent,
altering the colour and the scent of our life on earth? How shall the flower be
tended? The aerial dwarf within us shapes the flower.
The flower hungers for the sunlight,
for the air round her for the manna hidden in the dark wells of her roots.
Always the flower and the dwarf hunger with ambivalent appetites, their nether
resources affecting their urge towards the loftier.
They are no more still than we
ourselves for they are ourselves.
They thirst for fulfilment, for power at many levels, for knowledge of infinite
sorts, for love and for justice, which on its lower level of expression might
even fall to wear the garb of revenge. Thirst for power on its lowest level
still remains thirst for fulfilment. And so the dwarf and the flower are called
up beyond the stars and yet caught down by the feeding roots without which they
cannot reach upwards.
By the grace of a tenuous and
mysterious osmose threads run between the holistic dwarf, the flower and
ourselves. The eastern philosophies care to offer a grounded explanation.
The substance of our flesh is the
substance of the earth and the sky together. The spirit within us the breath of
the universe, the creative intelligence moulding the sun and the stars and the
planets.
The hunger for order sometimes
disturbs itself into hunger for repression, the hunger for joy into the hunger
for a passing pleasure.
Is perfection written so deep within
and without that some constant interaction is always at play? Between Man and
the Universe? To what force beyond the clouds does he aspire? What knowledge of
his knowledge does he harbour?
Shall we create ourselves as we
create others, adding to the outer, the inner, as if nothing were ever solved.
Does the corporeal frame dream the
mental frame, and the mental frame redraw the physical? The energies come and
go as waves upon the seashore, done and undone. Is there a tune for each
region? By the power of which our body may be gracefully moulded and the
surroundings we may build handsome and harmonious. An unearthly song to play
the mortal tune?