Free Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz Page B

pit. The teacher choked on this naive confession.
    "For God's sake be quiet!" he hissed. "I'll flunk you. Galkiewicz, you want to ruin me! You probably don't realize what you've just said?"
    Galkiewicz
    "But I don't understand it! I don't understand how I can admire it when I don't admire it."
    Teacher "How can you not admire it, Galkiewicz, when I told you a thousand times that you do admire it."
    Galkiewicz "Well, I don't admire it."
    Teacher "That's your private business. Obviously, Galkiewicz, you lack the intelligence. Others admire it."
    Galkiewicz "Nobody admires it, I swear. How can anybody admire it when nobody reads it besides us, schoolboys, and only because we're forced to ..."
    Teacher "Quiet, for God's sake! That's because there aren't many people who are truly cultural and up to the task..."
    Galkiewicz "But the cultural ones don't read it either. Nobody does, nobody. Absolutely nobody."
    Teacher "Listen, Galkiewicz, I have a wife and a child! Have pity on the child at least! There's no doubt, Galkiewicz, that we should admire great poetry, and Slowacki was, after all, a great poet... Maybe Slowacki doesn't move you, Galkiewicz, but you can't tell me that Mickiewicz, Byron, Pushkin, Shelley, Goethe don't pierce your soul through and through..."
    Galkiewicz "They pierce nobody. Nobody cares, they're bored by it all. Nobody can read more than two or three verses. O God! I can't..."
    Teacher "This is preposterous! Great poetry must be admired, because it is great and because it is poetry, and so we admire it."
    Galkiewicz "Well, I can't. And nobody can! O God!"
    Sweat covered the teacher's brow like dew, he took a snapshot of his wife and child out of his wallet and tried to move Galkiewicz, but the latter repeated his "I can't, I can't" over and over again. And the piercing "I can't" proliferated and grew infectious, mutterings of "we can't either" came from all corners, and a generalized inability threatened everyone. The teacher found himself at a terrible impasse. Any moment there could be an outbreak of—of what?—of inability, at any moment a wild roar of not wanting to could erupt and reach the headmaster and the inspector, at any moment the whole building could collapse and bury his child under the rubble, and here was this Galkiewicz with his "I can't, I can't."
    The hapless Ashface felt that he too was threatened by inability.
    "Pylaszczkiewicz!" he yelled, "you, Pylaszczkiewicz, why don't you show me, and show Galkiewicz and everybody else, the beauty of some splendid passage! But hurry up, or else periculum in mora! Pay attention, everybody! If I hear as much as a squeak I'll give you all a class assignment! We must shake this inability, we must, or woe to my child!"
    Syphon Pylaszczkiewicz stood up and began to recite a poem.
    And he recited. Not for an instant did he succumb to the general and suddenly prevailing inability, on the contrary—he was totally able, because he derived his ability from the inability of others. He recited then, and he recited with the proper intonation, he recited with emotion and from the depths of his soul. What's more, he recited beautifully, and the beauty of his recitation, enhanced by the beauty of the poem, by the greatness of the poet, and by the majesty of art, imperceptibly transformed itself into a monument to all possible beauty and greatness. What's more, he recited mysteriously and with reverence; he recited in all earnestness and with inspiration; and he sang the song of the bard as a bard's song should be sung. Oh, what beauty! What greatness, what genius, and what poetry! Wall, fly, ink, fingernails, ceiling, blackboard, windows, oh, the danger of inability was averted, the child saved and the wife likewise, everyone said yes, yes, because they now could, and they implored him to stop, because it was all too much. I also noticed that my neighbor was smearing my hand with ink—he had already smeared his own and was now starting on mine (because he