Page:Mosquitos (Faulkner).pdf/256

 always writing it for some woman, that he fondly believes he’s stealing a march on some brute bigger or richer or handsomer than he is; I believe that every word a writing man writes is put down with the ultimate intention of impressing some woman that probably don’t care anything at all for literature, as is the nature of women. Well, maybe she ain’t always a flesh and blood creature. She may be only the symbol of a desire. But she is feminine. Fame is only a by-product Do you remember, the old boys never even bothered to sign their things But, I don’t know. I suppose nobody ever knows a man’s reasons for what he does: you can only generalize from results.”

“He very seldom knows his reasons, himself,” the other said. “And by the time he has recovered from his astonishment at the unforeseen result he got, he has forgotten what reason he once believed he had But how can you generalize from a poem? What result does a poem have? You say that substance doesn’t matter, has no proper place in a poem. You have,” the Semitic man continued with curious speculation, “the strangest habit of contradicting yourself, of fumbling around and then turning tail and beating your listener to the refutation But God knows, there is plenty of room for speculation in modern verse. Fumbling, too, though the poets themselves do most of this. Don’t you agree, Eva?”

His sister answered “What?” turning upon him her dark, preoccupied gaze. He repeated the question. Fairchild interrupted in full career:

“The trouble with modern verse is, that to comprehend it you must have recently passed through an emotional experience identical with that through which the poet himself has recently passed. The poetry of modern poets is like a pair of shoes that only those whose feet are shaped like the cobbler’s