Looking from this summit down to the bottom, where something is
still left swarming like worms, from this summit all that is left
over in us from the ancients seems alike. Alike are the unlawful
coming motherhood of O-90, a murder, and the insanity of that
Number who dared to throw verses into the face of the United State;
and alike is the judgment for them--premature death. This is that
divine justice of which those stone-housed ancients dreamed, lit by
the naive pink rays of the dawn of history. Their "God" punished
sacrilege as a capital crime.
You Uranians, morose and as black as the ancient Spaniards, who
were wise in knowing so well how to burn at the stake, you are
silent; I think you agree with me. But I hear you, pink Venerians,
saying something about "tortures, executions, return to barbarism."
My dear Venerians, I pity you! You are incapable of philosophical,
mathematical thinking. Human history moves upward in circles,
like an aero. The circles are at times golden, sometimes they are
bloody, but all have 360 degrees. They go from 0° to 10°, 20°, 200°,
360°,--and then again 0°. Yes, we have returned to zero. But for a
mathematically working mind it is clear that this zero is different;
it is a perfectly new zero. We started from zero to the right and
came to zero on the left. Hence instead of plus zero, we are at
minus zero. Do you understand?
This zero appears to me now as a silent, immense, narrow rock,
sharp as a blade. In cruel darkness, holding our breath, we set
sail from the black night-side of the zero rock. For centuries we,
Columbuses, floated and floated; we made the circuit of the whole
world and at last! Hurrah! Salute! We climbed up the masts; before
us now was a new side of the zero rock, hitherto unknown, bathed
in the Polar light of the United State; a blue mass covered with
rainbow sparkles! Suns!--a hundred suns! A million rainbows! What
does it matter if we are separated from the other, black side of
the zero rock only by the thickness of a blade? A knife is the most
solid, the most immortal, the most inspired invention of man. The
knife served on the guillotine. The knife is the universal tool for
cutting knots. The way of paradoxes follows its sharp edge, the only
way becoming to a fearless mind....
RECORD TWENTY-ONE
The Duty of an Author
The Ice-swells
The Most Difficult Love
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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