La Cigale in Economics

FOR a considerable time past, the writer has viewed, with increased misgiving, the tendency in modern ethics toward the Glorification of the Industrial. Not alone from the headlines of penny-dreadfuls, but from those of our most conservative and altruistic periodicals, does it stare at me in large-typed, not to say violent, reproach, this spectre, How to Become Economically Precious.

It was not always brought home to me thus unkindly. “ In my day —” (how thankful am I to be no longer a very young person, and accordingly privileged to speak in such reminiscent vein!) there was none of this inexorable accounting of one’s self as a commercial proposition. A love of beauty, an instinct for artistic and aesthetic creation, was not only encouraged, but enthusiastically applauded by our friends and doting elders, as being the finishing touch to the “ com pleat” curriculum of that delightful period.

Is it to be wondered, therefore, that while contrasting the former with our latter-day educative ideals, I am sometimes filled with a poignant and shuddering sense of Thanksgiving — such as the survivor doubtless feels when he sees the engulfing of the friendly plank o’er which he has just passed to safety ? I have “ had my day,” but 1 do not repine thereupon.

For — alas! rather from instinct than from any process of ratiocination, I realize that I am not industrially valuable : that from the economic standpoint I am not precious. I cannot doubt my status in the great world of commercial efficiency to be practically nil; my raisons d’etre meagre and unconvincing.

Moreover, it is with deep humiliation and even with some degree of alarm that I have discovered the difficulty to be congenital. I find my very noblest efforts at self-improvement invariably balked by a certain curious defect of temperament; an element so fatally irrelevant and mercurial as to be at odds with all recognized methods of systematic accomplishment.

Routine is disquieting to me. Disquieting, did I say? it is distressing; it is positively painful! According to my own diagnosis, I am afflicted with what may be termed an inherent aversion to the Methodical.

Think not, oh, kindly reader! that I have not sorrowed most heavily over the phenomenon. Times innumerable have I expostulated with this erratic and irresponsible Self, wrestling with it (as it were with what good old Socrates would style my “ daemon ”), and imploring it to get behind me, the while I humbly strive to become a better industrial unit.

But in vain. “ Es hat nicht sollen sein.” Poor, happy-go-lucky, improvident Cigale! Forever the creature of glowing fancies — inveterate dreamer of dreams! Of a certainty, there is something ineradicable in this passion for the mystic; this absurd and unreasonable joy of living; and for her sense of humor — really, it seems hardly respectable that it should have outlived so much of sorrow and disillusion, which by all decent rules should have killed it off long ago!

Occasionally, it is true, she has had glimpses of a better order of things. Take, for example, those rare moments of household drudgery, when, thrilled by the proud consciousness of fulfilling necessary, if unpleasant, workaday tasks, she experiences a delightful glow of selfrighteousness, coupled with a proportionate severity toward all of her fellow mortals who may be of a more aesthetic habit of mind.

“ Idle dreamers! slothful cumberers of the earth! clogs in the noble scheme of commercial progress! ” she apostrophizes them, in a fine frenzy of righteous denunciation.

Alas for the pharisaical cigale, and her brief spasm of economic respectability!

Of a sudden, the thrush pours its rapturous note from the blue above, or perhaps the smell of lilacs, pure, cool, and intoxicatingly sweet, sweeps in upon the wet spring air; or the sunset bursts into a glorious riot of gold and crimson flame in the West. And lo! Instantly the old thrall is upon her once more; the old heart, awake and eager, and wild again in its passionate joyance of life, and color and imagination!

The duty that lies nearest is forgotten. The prosaic dust-mop slips unnoticed to the floor; the array of golden biscuit (tender, nascent young things of lovely promise) are unhesitatingly abandoned to their fate. For the cicada has flown outside, into the open, and pauses there, breathless, ecstatic, prisoned by what Ruskin would term an “iron glow” of delight. Wondrous the fantasies she is weaving; magic the dream-vistas she beholds ! Like Baudelaire and the childlike Verlaine, she feels an “ unassuageable nostalgia for the places she has never visited! ”

And only the insistent voice of duty recalls her at last to mundane conditions. To the discarded dust-mop, that must now be wielded with increased energy to meet increased demands; to the biscuit of gold augury — oh, sorry spectacle! — become demoralized and shriveled to a decadent brown, long past the psychological moment of triumph.

An undesirable citizeness she, forsooth !

And so the thing goes on, despite her fervent contrition, not only seven times, but seventy times seven.

It may be that a new umbrella is needed, against the fateful rainy day. But such a luxury has to be indefinitely postponed. For, displayed with all possible ostentatiousness in the window of the big bookstore she passes daily — is there not that rare first edition of her best-beloved? (Ah, if only it were not tree calf, besides!)

Moreover, there is that matter of the little Corot she has already bespoken in a moment of dire temptation. While next week must be managed that ticket to the great symphony, whose divine strains are as nectar to her music-hungered soul. No, La Cigale has no choice! These things are necessities, and umbrellas and like frivolities must be deferred.

Especially so, since her earnings from her Art constitute a mere pittance — “ next to nothing ” as she herself confesses, albeit without a thought of disloyalty toward her loved work (“ Du Meine Wonn’ — oh, Du Mein Schmerz”).

But what if the bare pittance suffice? What if it mean the nourishment of the soul as well as the body ? the living of the life beautiful and everlasting ?

On this matter, she finds herself pondering deeply of late. In all humility, and only when stirred to meek protest by the invective of some uncommonly fiery spirit among the sublimated fourmis, she (in deprecatory mood and solely for the sake of information) would venture to inquire, —

Whether, after all, there is no word to be said on behalf of the idealist, the lover of art, and truth, and grace, for their own sakes ? The aesthetically unemployed ! Would society be so rich without them — their aspirations, their vividness, their emotions and sympathies ? May they not also serve, who only feel, and love, and create beautiful things out of their glowing dreams ? Yea, even though they constitute so negligible assets in the great cosmos of commercial efficiency ?

The world of visions! oh, but the long, long time that it shall last, after the industrious and glorified jourmis shall have forever disappeared “ beyond the veil!”