KING ARTHUR’S FAREWELL – LORD TENNYSON

KING ARTHUR’S FAREWELL – LORD TENNYSON

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere,

‘Ah! My Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?

Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?

For now I see the true times are dead,

When every morning brought a noble chance,

And every chance brought out a noble knight.

Such times have been not since the light that led

The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.

But now the whole ROUND TABLE is dissolved

Which was an image of the mighty world;

And I, the last, go forth companionless,

And the days darken round me, and the years,

Among new men, strange faces, other minds’.

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:

‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfills Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done

May He within Himslef make pure! But thou,

If thou shouldst never see my face again,

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats

That nourish a blind life within the brain

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

But now farewell.’

Arthur was the legendary king of England. In a fierce fight with the traitor Modred he was mortally wounded. The last scene of his life is beautifully depicted in the ‘Morte De Arthur’ from which this extract has been taken.

Arthur was the legendary king of England. He was mortally wounded in the course of his fight with Modred the traitor. At his request Sir Bedivere, the last of the Round Table Knights, carried him to the boat which was moored in the nearby lake.

After putting him in the boat Sir Bedivere says that he is feeling lonely, as all his companions have already departed from this world. They really had a good time together, when every morning brought them a chance for some adventure or other. By undertaking adventures every one of them proved to be noble knight. Never in the history of Christendom there lived so many brave men at the same time. The Round Table which has hither to been an embodiment of the mighty world is now dissolved. Hereafter he has to live alone among men whose attitude to life is entirely different. As he thinks of this, future seems dark and dreary.

In reply to this, King Arthur says that the old order is changing giving way to new. It is perhaps God’s will that there should be changes, because otherwise the world is likely to be corrupted by one custom. So he wants Sir Bedivere to console himself and try to adjust with changing world. There is no use of expecting any consolation from a dying man like him. He has lived his life in a way he thought the best. If there is

Anything wrong in what he has done, let God purify it. When he is dead and gone the best thing Sir Bedivere can do is to pray for him. Prayer is very powerful. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dream of. Knowing this we should pray to God for one another and that is the best way to distinguish ourselves from beasts.

From Sir Bedivere’s speech we are able to learn something about his character, namely his love of adventure and loyalty to his master.

The speech of King Arthur reveals that he is a God fearing man. He makes God the judge of all that he has done. Equally edifying is his attitude to prayer.

*****

THE BROKEN TOWER - HART CRANE

The Broken Tower - Hart Crane

The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn

Displaces me as though I dropped down the knell

Of a spent day – to wander the cathedral lawn

From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.

knell: death knell

Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps

Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway

Antiphonal carillons launched before

The stars are caught and hived in the sun’s ray?

carillons: a tune played on bells

The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;

And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave

Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score

Of broken intervals… and I, their sexton slave!

sexton: a person whose job is to take care of a church and its surroundings and ring the church bells

Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping

The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!

Pagodas, campaniles with reveilles out leaping—

O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain! …

encyclicals: an official letter written by the Pope and sent to all Roman Catholic Bishops

canyons: a deep valley with steep sides of rock

impasse: dead lock. Does not come to an agreement

pagodas: a temple (a religious building)

campaniles: a tower that contain a bell

reveilles: a tune that is played to wake soldiers in the morning

And so it was I entered the broken world

To trace the visionary company of love, its voice

An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)

But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

My word I poured. But was it cognate, scored

Of that tribunal monarch of the air

Whose thigh embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word

In wounds pledged once to hope—cleft to despair?

The steep encroachments of my blood left me

No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower

As flings the question true?) – or is it she

Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?—

And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes

My veins recall and add, revived and sure

The angelus of wars my chest evokes:

What I hold healed, original now, and pure …

angelus: (in the Roman Catholic Church) prayers said in the morning, at midday and in the evening; a bell rung when it is time for these prayers.

And builds, within, a tower that is not stone

(Not stone can jacket heaven)—but slip

Of pebbles—visible wings of silence sown

In azure circles, widening as they dip

The matrix if the heart, lift down the eye

That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower…

The commodious, tall decorum of the sky

Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.

matrix: prevailing conditions/ surrounding substance/ atmosphere/environment

 ****

THE GUIDE - R K NARAYAN

THE GUIDE - R.K. Narayan

The setting of R.K.Narayan’s novel, as in most of his novels, is Malgudi, a fictional town in southern India. The novel is told through a series of flashbacks.

Raju, the central character, grows up near a railway station, and becomes a shopkeeper, and then a resourceful guide. He meets Rosie, a beautiful dancer, and her husband, whom Raju nicknames Marco, because the man dresses in a thick jacket and helmet as if undertaking and expedition like Marco Polo. Marco is a scholar and anthropologist, who is more interested in his research than his young and beautiful wife Rosie.

Rosie and Marco engage Raju’s services as a tourist guide, and he takes them sightseeing. She wants to see a king cobra dancing: Marco wants to study cave paintings. Rosie and Marco quarrel constantly, and Marco remains cold and aloof toward Rosie. While Marco is away studying cave paintings, Raju falls in love with Rosie. When Marco discovers that Raju and Rosie have become lovers, Marco abandons her and returns to Madras.

Raju becomes infatuated with Rosie. He is so obsessed with Rosie that he forgets his business, falls into debts, and loses his shop at the railway station. He also loses his mother’s respect because he is living with a married woman. Raju’s mother moves out of their house is claimed to off his debts.

Raju encourages Rosie to resume her career as a dancer, and becomes her manager, launching her on a successful career as an interpreter of Bharat Natya, the classical dance of India. But he spends money extravagantly, and is tricked by Marco into forging Rosie’s signature for a package of her jewels, a mistake that earns him a two-year prison sentence.

On his release from prison, Raju stops to rest near an abandoned temple, where a villager named Velan mistakes him for a holy man. Raju does not want to return in disgrace to his friends in Malgudi, and reluctantly decides to play the part of holy man. E is happy to accept the daily offering of food, which the villagers bring him. Gradually he accepts the role, which has been thrust upon him, and he acts as spiritual advisor to the community.

Raju is content with the arrangement, until a drought occurs, and, to save face, he has to take up a 12-day fast. As a great crowd gathers to watch him during his ordeal, he begins to believe in the role he has created. He has taken on an unselfish task, not for love or money, for the first time in his life. Despite grave danger to his health, he continues to fast until he collapses. His legs sag down as he feels that the rain in falling in the hills. The ending of the novel leaves unanswered the question of whether he dies, or whether the drought has really ended.

A central theme of the novel is the transformation of Raju from his role as a tour guide to that of a spiritual guide. The title of the novel, The Guide, has double meaning, and Raju is in a sense a double character.  AS a tour guide and lover, he is impulsive, unprincipled, and self-indulgent. After his imprisonment, and after his transformation as a holy man, he is careful, thoughtful, and self-disciplined.

The novel also tells two stories, that of Raju’s relationship with Rosie, and that of Raju’s relationship with the villagers as holy man. The novel begins with Raju sitting beside the temple and meeting the villager named Velan, who mistakes him for a holy man. The novel then alternates between an account of Raju’s career as a holy man, which is told in the third-person, and Raju’s account to Velan of his privies career as a tour guide and lover, which is told in the first-person, this dualism reflects the dualism in Raju’s character. He is transformed from a sinner to a saint, though he is never truly a sinner, and never truly a saint. Because of his capacity for empathy, Raju is sympathetic character throughout the novel.

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MONEY - PHILIP LARKIN

Money - Philip Larkin

PHILIP LARKIN was the best-loved poet of his generation in England, and the winner of many academic and literary awards. His collected Poems appeared posthumously in 1988.

Larkin’s ‘Money’ treats a familiar subject in a charmingly candid and personal way. He urges us to question the wisdom of frugal spending in youth. It is hard, says the poet, to resist the temptation of money, harder to control our desire for creature-comforts.

I yield to the temptation of money. Metaphorically, the poet imagines that he listens to a siren’s song in the tinkle of coins, and the rustle of paper money. The rising inflation always devalues money. And therefore reduces one’s capacity for buying goods and services. If you are going to buy all unnecessary things one-day you cannot buy the necessary things. 

“By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:

Clearly money has something to do with life”

House and car are some ‘goods and services’ others have in excess when the thrifty person does not even fulfill his basic physical needs or enjoy social prestige and respect.

‘You can’t put off being young until you retire,’

There are certain things you can afford to put off (delay) until you retire. But your body and mind does not hear you in youth. Further, it makes no sense to have a lot of money when it hardly tempts you as in youth.

When the poet listens to ‘money singing’, he is reminded of scenes rich in visual details: the provincial town, the slums, the canal, the churches. Each has its place in answering to man’s desire; each exists to prompt man’s desire.

These scenic details prompt both desire and guilt, the first followed by the second. This quit sad like having money. Money in hand, one finds one’s longing inevitable as much as guilt that goes with it.

* * * *

ARE YOU AN ENTREPRENEUR? - VICTOR KIAM

Text for III Semester B. A. / B. Com./ B. Sc. Additional English  

ARE YOU AN ENTREPRENEUR?

VICTOR KIAM

When I was eight, The Streetcar Named Desire ran only four blocks from my home in New Orleans. But the sound of eager Desire racing through the night did not inspire me – as it did Tennessee Williams – to spin a passionate tale. Instead, it invited the entrepreneurial muse to whisper the suggestions that guided me to the path I’m still travelling.

That summer I noticed that people getting off the Streetcar at the end of the day looked as if they would pass out if they had to go another step without a cool drink. I didn’t realize it then, but I had responded to the first precept of an entrepreneur: I had recognized a need.

My grandfather gave me five dollars to buy 100 bottles of Coca-Cola. But before I could take my first step into the world of high finance, I had to set a price for my goods. With naïve boldness, I settled on a mark-up of 100 per cent!

Business was brisk the first day and got better as the week progressed. You would have thought I was a pint-size millionaire. My grandfather was of that opinion. So you can imagine his shock when, having sold my entire sock, I had only four dollars to show for my efforts.

Few of my customers could afford to pay ten cents for a bottle. Many couldn’t even afford the five cents I needed to break even. It was so hot that I couldn’t bear to let anyone go away empty-handed, so I just gave away my merchandise. My first business was a financial failure, but it sure built up a lot of good will.

Entrepreneurs can be found everywhere – from fellows with outdoor lunch wagons to people within the corporate mainstream. Their common bond is that they are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or stake their reputations in support of an idea or a project. They’re following their visions, and have decided to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve success.

In 1968, after 18 years at Lever Brothers and Playtex, I left my job. I had long thought of doing something on my own, but it was talking with friends and attending a seminar on entrepreneurship that gave me the push I needed. I bought into the watch manufacturer Benrus Corporation. Then in 1979 I acquired the Remington Company.

Thirty-five years of experience has given me a good idea of the entrepreneur’s profile. To find out if you have what it takes, ask yourself.

1.      Do I have enough self-confidence? You must believe in yourself. In a company, you want the people working for you to follow your lead; you want your superiors to respect your judgement. If you’re running your own business, you want investors to place their money and trust behind you. You want your clients to catch your enthusiasm and to believe in your product or service. How can you inspire them if you don’t believe in yourself?

If you lack self-confidence, find some. Lack of confidence isn’t a disease, it’s a symptom. Self-perceived negatives can rob you of a healthy ego.

Every six months, I do a personal balance sheet. I make a list of my pluses and minuses. For example, I was once a procrastinator. Confronting this helped me to overcome it. I started making it a point to tackle distasteful jobs first. In a short time, procrastination disappeared from my list of minuses.

There is nothing on my list I can’t overcome if I make the effort. Try a balance sheet of your own.

2.   Do I have confidence in my venture? I’ve been asked, ‘When you make an investment, are you backing the idea or the people behind it?’ Both. No entrepreneur is a miracle worker. You can work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, but if your product is lousy, you’ve wasted your time.

A friend of mine is a terrific shoe salesman. When management of the business changed, the quality of the stock dropped off. A customer complained that the expensive shoe she was about to buy was too tight. He offered to stretch it. ‘I gripped the shoe and pulled’, he told me. ‘It tore in half. What had been a finely crafted shoe was now a piece of junk. I told the customer the truth, then I resigned.

The lesson is simple: you can’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy.

3.    Am I willing to make sacrifices? Body-builders have a saying, ‘No pain, no gain’. I should be the credo of every entrepreneur. Forget the clock.  Nine-to five doesn’t exist.

Saturday became part of my regular work schedule as a young salesman. And when a snowstorm hit my region, it was an opportunity, not an obstacle. The idea that my rivals would be hiding from the elements gave me the impetus to push my product. It’s amazing how receptive a buyer could be when the snow was waist-deep and I was the only friendly face he’d seen all day. If you’re opening your own business, you’ll lose the security of a regular salary and the company benefits you take for granted. And there will be other changes. You might not get home for dinner; relaxing week-ends may be few and far between. I’ve even seen entrepreneurs whose marriages fell apart because they forgot about their spouses. That’s one sacrifice I don’t recommend!

4.    Do I recognize opportunity? This is essential. Get used to examination all angles of a proposition. Ask, ‘How can this work for me?’

I learnt this the hard way. When I was with Playtex I met an inventor who showed me two pieces of nylon fabric and demonstrated how they adhered without hooks, zips of buttons. All I could think about was the lack of applicability for our brassiere business.

That product was Velcro. And not a day goes by when I don’t see it used somewhere.

5.   Am I decisive? You’d better be. As an entrepreneur, you’re on your own. And you’re going to encounter situations where time isn’t on your side. At Lever Brothers we were launching a new product, an improved wrinkle cream. We planned a major promotion in Ohio stores, with a famous make-up man flying in from New York to apply the stuff. But he suddenly became ill and couldn’t come.

What do I do now? I thought. So I spent the next 24 hours in a crash course in make-up, using a secretary as a guinea pig. Poor woman. I practised until her face was raw.

My moment of truth came with my first customer, the wife of a store president. I applied the product and she left without comment. Two days later she came back. Her husband had liked the results so much that she wanted more. Developing a quick positive response to adversity had saved an important promotion campaign.

6.      Am I willing to lead by example? You can’t ask. Your workers to give their all if your idea of a rough day is two hours in the office and six on the golf course. I never ask an employee to do something I’m not willing to so, and I work even harder than they do.

By now you should have some idea if you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. So I’ll mention some of the rewards for your sacrifices. You’ll find satisfaction in creating something out of nothing. You’ll gain a positive sense of self. And of course, there are financial rewards.

But it’s not easy. Nothing worthwhile is! If David had slain a dwarf instead of Goliath, who would have remembered?

****

Glossary:

entrepreneur:   person who undertakes business with a chance of profit or loss.

muse:               inspiring goddess

pass out:          colloquial phrase meaning faint, lose consciousness

precept:           moral instruction; rule or guide, especially for behavior

naïve:               natural or innocent in behavior (because of being young or inexperienced}

pint:                 one-eighth of a gallon

merchandise:   goods bought and sold, trade goods

corporate:        belonging to a corporation (i.e. group of people recognized in law as a single entity, especially in business)

self-perceived: regard oneself mentally in a specified manner

procrastinator: one who delays actions

venture:           undertaking in which there is a risk

credo:              a statement of belief

impetus:           driving force

adversity:         trouble

spouse:            husband or wife

Tennessee Williams: Famous American playwright (1911 – 1983)

‘A Street Car Named Desire’: Tennessee Williams’ classic play, produced in 1947

‘David and Goliath’: Reference to the Biblical story in which David in his youth slew the Philistine giant Goliath

 *****

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN - WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN

Text for III Semester B. A./ B. Com./ B. Sc. Additional English

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN

WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN

                                                       To JS/07/M 378

This marble Monument is erected by the State

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, 

For in everything he did he served the Greater Community

Except for the War till the day he retired

He worked in a factory and never got fired,

But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.

Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,

For his Union reports that he paid his dues,

(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)

And our Social Psychology workers found

That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.

The press are convinced that he bought a paper every day

And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.

Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,

And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.

Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare

He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan

And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,

A Phonograph, a radio, a car and a Frigidaire.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content

That he held the proper opinion are for the time of year;

When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was he went.

He was married and added five children to the population,

Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Glossary:

Bureau:           Government or Municipal department of office

Fudge Motors: an imaginary motor company

Inc.:                 Short form of ‘Incorporated’; American equivalent of Ltd. (Limited)

Scab:               workman who refuses to join a strike or who takes a striker’s place; blackleg

Health Card:   a card issued by a doctor or hospital on which the patient’s illnesses and treatments are recorded.

Producers Research and High-Grade Living: Imaginary names of two firms which conduct research to find out the customer’s reactions to various products.

Eugenist:         A student of Eugenics; a study of the factors which lead to the birth of fine children and improvement of human genetic stock.

*****

UNLOCK YOUR OWN CREATIVITY - ROGER VON OECH (TEXT)

Text for III Semester B.A./ B. Com./ B. Sc. Additional English 

UNLOCK YOUR OWN CREATIVITY

ROGER VON OECH

If I held up a sheet of white paper and put a black dot on it with my pen, what would you see? I’ve used this demonstration on thousands of adults in the seminars I run, and invariably I get the same answer: ‘A black dot.’ When I tried it on a kindergarten class, a bunch of hands shot up. ‘A Mexican hat,’ called out one kid. ‘No, that’s a burnt hamburger’, said another. ‘A squashed insect,’ observed another. 

When young, we’re naturally creative because we let our minds run free. But as we’re taught to follow the rules, our thinking narrows. For much of life this can be a blessing: it wouldn’t do to create a new way home from work if it meant driving down the wrong side of the road.

But in many areas of our lives, creativity can be a matter of survival. Things are changing too fast to get along simply with old ideas. When I was working for IBM ten years ago, half of what any technical engineer had learnt became obsolete in only three years; it happens even sooner now. And what about our home lives? With, for instance, more and more women opting for careers and independence, couples have to be more creative about their relationships to avoid conflicts. 

Fortunately creativity isn’t all that mysterious. One important creative trait was well-defined by Nobel Prize-winning physician Albert Szent-Gyorgyi when he said, ‘Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.’

‘Mental Locks’

How do we start ‘thinking what nobody has thought’? Usually it takes a whack on the head, like Sir Isaac Newton supposedly has when an apple striking his skull awakened him to the laws of gravity. |Whacks can range from something as major as losing a job to something as trivial as wanting an unusual dish for a dinner party. We’re more likely to respond creatively – which is to say, think of a new ideas – if we’ve already been chipping away at the mental locks’ that close our minds.

What are these locks? As I said in my book A whack in the Side of the Head, for the most part they are our uncritical acceptance of seven common statements:

1.   Find the right answer. Almost from the first day of school, we’re taught that there’s one right answer to every problem. But many important issues are open-ended. Take the question, ‘What do I do now that I’ve lost my job?’ the obvious right answer is: ‘Look for another job.’ There is also a second right answer: ‘Go back to school and learn a new trade.’ Or a third: Start your own business.’

The mere act of looking for a second answer will often produce the new idea you need. As French philosopher Emile Chartier said, ‘Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one we have.’

2.  That’s not logical. Hard, logical thinking can be death to a new idea because it eliminates alternatives that seem contradictory. New ideas germinate faster in the loose soil of soft thinking, which finds similar ties and connections among different things or situations.

In my workshops, I ask people to create metaphors to unlock their thoughts. A manager had been thinking logically about what was wrong with his company, but couldn’t get a grip on it until he came up with his metaphor: ‘Our company is a galley ship without a drummer. We’ve got some people rowing at full beat, some at one-half beat, and some dead beats.’ This man made himself the missing ‘drummer’, with the result that the operation smoothed out.

3.   Follow the rules. To get an idea, you often have to break rules that no longer make sense. My friend Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari Inc. And inventor of the first video game, is a dedicated rule breaker. Once Bushnell was trying to make coin-operated games more fun. For a long time he followed the rule that the playing field had to be 66 cm wide. Only when he threw away that rule and made the field 76 cm was he able to increase the game’s possibilities.

4.    Be practical. To grow, ideas initially need the wide realm of the possible, rather than the narrow one of the practical. You can enter this realm by asking, ‘What if……?’

An engineer in a chemical company startled his colleagues by asking, ‘What if we put gunpowder in our house paint? When it starts peeling in a few years, we just put a match to it and blow it off.’  The house might blow up with such a paint, but this engineer was talking to ‘idea’ men who brushed aside the impracticality and started thinking. Eventually they came up with the idea of an additive that could later be activated and cause paint to be easily stripped off walls. The company is now developing the process.

5.   Don’t be foolish. Humour can show is the ambiguity of situations, revealing a second and often startling answer.

Being foolish is a form of play. If necessity is the mother of invention, play is its father. When faced with a problem, let yourself play, risk being foolish. And write down the ideas that then come to you.

6.    That’s not my area. Fresh ideas almost invariably come from outside one’s field of specialization. Creative people have to be generalists, interested in everything and aware that what they learn in one field might prove useful in another. We’re all generalists at home – chefs, decorators, teachers, gardeners, handymen – and home is where to start being creative. The average homemaker is confronted daily with more creative opportunities than the middle manager in a company sees in a month. 

7.   I’m not creative. Most of us retain the idea that creativity is only for artists and inventors. And when we criticize ourselves as not creative, we set in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy. A person who thinks he’s not creative in his everyday life won’t try a creative solution to an important problem.

Self-esteem is essential to creativity because any new idea makes you a pioneer. Once you put an idea into action, you’re out there alone taking risks of failure and ridicule.

As management consultant Roy Blitzer had said, ‘The only person who likes change is a wet baby.’ But we need change – the type of change that comes through the creative thinking of all people, not just geniuses.  

Glossary

obsolete:          no longer used; out of date.

trait:                 distinguishing quality or characteristic

Sir Isaac Newton: the Physicist, credited with the formulation of the law of gravity

whack:             strike with a hard blow

trivial:              of small value or importance

germinate:       (cause to) start growth

metaphor:        a descriptive term which is imaginatively but not literally applicable e.g. Ranjit Singh, The Lion of Punjab.

galley:              a long, low-built ship with one deck, propelled by oars; a state barge; a kind of boat attached to a ship of war.

realm:              a sphere or domain

ambiguity:       uncertainty or dubiousness of meaning

esteem:            to have a good opinion of

*****

A TALK ON ADVERTISING - HERMAN WOUK (TEXT)

Text for III Semester B.A./ B. Com./ B. Sc. Additional English 

A TALK ON ADVERTISING

HERMAN WOUK

An after-Dinner Oration by the Artist

Marquis, while you were talking I looked around this table and saw that (nearly) everyone here earns a living through the activity called advertising. Now, I realize that you invited me in the absence, enforced by your sedentary ways, of stuffed tiger heads or other trophies on your walls, a live artist being the equivalent of a dead beast as a social ornament. I will not question your motive because it has given me a chance to do a beautiful and good thing. I should like to entreat all these gentlemen to redeem the strange, bittersweet miracle of their lives, while there is yet time, by giving up the advertising business at once.

Has it ever occurred to any of you gentlemen to examine the peculiar fact that you find bread in your mouths daily? How does this happen? Who is it that you have persuaded to feed you? The obvious answer is that you buy your food, but this just states the question in another, less clear way, because money is nothing but a token of exchange. Drop the confusing element of money from the whole process, and the question I’ve posed must confront you bleakly. What is it that you do, that entitles you to eat?

A shoemaker gives shoes for his bread. Well. A singer sings for her supper, well. A capitalist leads a large enterprise. Well. A pilot flies, a coal-miner digs, a sailor moves things, a mister preaches, an author tells stories, a laundryman washes, an auto worker makes cars, a painter makes pictures, a street-car conductor moves people, a stenographer writes down words, a lumberjack saws, and a tailor sews. The people with the victuals appreciate these services and cheerfully feed the performers. But what does an advertising man do?

He induces human beings to want things they don’t want.

Now, I will be deeply obliged if you will tell me by what links of logic anybody can be convinced that your activity – the creation of want where want does not exist – is a useful one and should be rewarded with food. Doesn’t it seem, rather, the worst sort of mischief, deserving to be starved into extinction?

None of you, however, is anything but well-fed; yet I am sure that until this moment it has never occurred to you on what a dubious basis your feeding is accomplished. I shall tell you exactly how you eat. You induce people to use more things than they naturally desire – the more useless and undesirable the article, the greater the advertising effort needed to dispose of it – and in all the profit from that unnatural purchasing, you share. You are fed by the makers of undesired things, who exchange these things for food by means of your arts and give you your share of the haul.  

Lest you think I oversimplify, I gave you an obvious illustration. People naturally crave meat; so the advertising of meat is on a negligible scale. However, nobody is born craving tobacco, and even its slaves instinctively loathe it. So the advertising of tobacco is the largest item of expense in its distribution. It follows, of course, that advertising men thrive most richly in the service of utterly useless most richly in the service of utterly useless commodities like tobacco or underarm pastes, or in a field where there is a hopeless plethora of goods, such as soap or whisky.  

But the great evil of advertising is not that it is unproductive and wasteful; were it so, it would be no worse than idleness. No. Advertising blasts everything that is good and beautiful in this land with a horrid spreading mildew. It has tarnished Creation. What is sweet to any of you in this world? Love? Nature? Art? Language? Youth? Behold them all, yoked by advertising in the harness of commerce.

Aurora Dawn! Has any of you enough of a ear for English to realize what a crime against the language is that (trade) name? Aurora is the dawn! The redundancy should assail your ears like the shriek of a bad hinge. But you are so numbed by habit that it conveys no offence. So it is with all your barbarities. Shakespeare used the rhyming of ‘double’ and ‘bubble’ to create two immortal lines in Macbeth. You use it to help sell your Dubl-Bubl Shampoo, and you have not the slightest sense of doing anything wrong. Should lifts man above the animals and that you are smothering the flame in mud, you would stare. You are staring. Let me tell you without images, then, that you are cheapening speech until it is ceasing to be an honest method of exchange, and commercial is meant to be a lie and the English in the President’s speech which follows, a truth, will in the end fall into a paralyzing scepticism in which all utterance will be disbelieved.

God made a great green wonderland when he spread out the span of the United States. Where is the square mile inhabited by men wherein advertising has not drowned out the land’s meek hymn with the blare of billboards? By what right do you turn Nature into a painted hag crying ‘Com buy’?

A few heavenly talents brighten the world in each generation. Artistic inspiration is entrusted to weak human beings who can be tempted with gold. Has advertising scrupled to buy up the holiest of these gifts and set them to work peddling?

And the traffic in lovely youth! By the Lord, gentlemen, I would close every advertising agency in the country tomorrow, if only to head off the droves of silly girls, sufficiently cursed with beauty, who troop into the cities each month, most of them to be stained and scarred, a few to find ashy success in the hardening life of a model! When will a strong voice call a halt to this dismal pilgrimage, this Children’s Crusade to the Unholy Land? When will someone denounce the snaring allurements of the picture magazines? When will someone tell these babies that for each girl who grins on a magazine cover a hundred weep in back rooms, and that even the grin is a bought and forced thing that fades with the flash of the photographer’s bulb, leaving a face grim with scheming or heartbreak?

To what ends is all this lying, vandalism and misuse? You are trying to sell; never mind what, never mind how, never mind to whom – just sell, sell, sell! Small wonder that in good old American slang ‘sell’ means ‘fraud’! Come now! Do you hesitate to promise requited love to miserable girls, triumph to failures virility to weaklings, even prowess to little children, for the price of a mouth wash or a breakfast food? Does it ever occur to you to be ashamed to live by preying on the myriad little tragedies of unfulfilment which make your methods pay so well?

I trust that I am offending everybody very deeply. An artist has the privileges of the court fool, you know. I paint because I see with a seeing eye, an eye that familiarity never glazes. Advertising strikes me as it would a man from Mars and as it undoubtedly appears to the angels: an occupation the aim of which is subtle prevarication for gain, and the effect of which is the blighting of everything fair and pleasant in our time with the garish fungus of greed. If I have made all of you, or just one of you, repent of this career and determine to seek decent work, I will not have breathed in vain today.

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Glossary

oration:            a formal speech

sedentary ways: spending much of the time seated

lumberhjack:   a person who cuts down trees for a living

extinction:       ruin or destruction

dubious:           doubtful or questionable

plethora:          plenty or excess

mildew:             destructive growth of tiny fungi forming on plants, leather, food, etc. in warm and damp conditions

behold:             look, notice

yoked:              bound, linked or tied to

Prometheus:      a mythical character who stole fire from heaven

smothering:       suffocating, suppressing

paralyzing:        rendering helpless

scepticism:        doubt

hymn:               sacred song or music

bill boards:        advertisements displayed on boards

traffic:               immoral and illegal trade

crusades:          religious battles in the Middle Ages led by Christian rulers to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims

prevarication:    evading the truth

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