The Dream Life of Balso Snell Read Online Free Page A

an irritating grain of sand. As the accumulations grow and become solidified, the original irritation disappears. If the murder continues to grow in size it may become too large for me to contain; then I am afraid it will kill me, just as the pearl eventually kills the oyster.
     
     
    Balso put the manuscript back into the tree and continued on his way, his head bowed in thought. The world was getting to be a difficult place for a lyric poet. He felt old. “Ah youth!” he sighed elaborately. “Ah Balso Snell!” Suddenly he heard a voice at his elbow.
    “Well, nosey, how did you like my theme?”
    Balso turned and saw the boy whose diary he had been reading. He was still in short pants and looked less than twelve years old.
    “Interesting psychologically, but is it art?” Balso said timidly. “I’d give you B minus and a good spanking.”
    “What the hell do I care, about art! Do you know why I wrote that ridiculous story—because Miss McGeeney, my English teacher, reads Russian novels and I want to sleep with her. But maybe you run a magazine. Will you buy it? I need money.”
    “No, son, I’m a poet. I’m Balso Snell, the poet.” “A poet! For Christ’s sake!”
    “What you ought to do, child, is to run about more. Read less and play baseball.”
    “Forget it. I know a fat girl who only sleeps with poets. When I’m with her I’m a poet, too. I won her with a poem.
    “0 Beast of Walls! 0 Walled-in Fat Girl! Your conquest was hasdly worth The while of one whom Arras and Arrat, Pelion, Ossa, Parnassus, Ida, Pisgah and Pike’s Peak never interested.
    “Not bad, eh? But I’m fed up with poetry and art. Yet what can I do. I need women and because I can’t buy or force them, I have to make poems for them: God knows how tired I am of using the insanity of Van Gogh and the adventures of Gauguin as can-openers for the ambitious Count Six-Times. And how sick I am of literary bitches. But they’re the only kind that’ll have me….Listen, Balso, for a dollar I’ll sell you a brief outline of my position.” Balso gave the dollar to get rid of him and received in return a little pamphlet.
     
    THE PAMPHLET
    Yesterday, while debating whether I should shave or not, news of the death of my friend Saniette arrived. I decided not to shave.
    Today, while shaving, I searched myself for yesterday’s emotions. Searched, that is, the pockets of my dressing gown and the shelves of the medicine closet. Not finding anything, I looked further. I looked [first smiling, of course] into the bowels of my compassion, the depths of my being, and even into the receding vistas of my memory. I came from my search, as was to be expected, empty-handed. My “Open, oh flood gates of feeling! Empty, oh vials of passion!” made certain and immediate the defeat of my purpose.
    That I failed in my search was for me a sign of my intelligence. I am [just as children choose sides to play “cops and robbers” or “Indians and cowboys”] on the side of intellect against the emotions, on the side of the brain against the heart. Nevertheless, I recognized the cardboard and tin of my position [a young man, while shaving, dismisses Death with a wave of his hand] and did not give up my search for an emotion. I marshalled all my reasons for grief [I had lived with Saniette for almost two years], yet failed to find sorrow.
    Death is a very difficult thing for me to consider sincerely because I find certain precomposed judgments awaiting my method of consideration to render it absurd. No matter how I form my comment I attach to it the criticisms sentimental, satirical, formal. With these judgments there goes a series of literary associations which remove me still further from genuine feeling. The very act of recognizing Death, Love, Beauty—all the major subjects—has become, from literature and exercise, impossible.
    After admitting to myself that I had failed, I tried to cover my defeat by practicing a few sneers in the bathroom mirror. I