Creditors and Pariah | Page 8

successes seemed about to put her in the shadow--as well as her
reputation-- then I tried to put courage into her by belittling myself, and
by making my own art seem inferior to hers. I talked so long about the
insignificant part played by painting on the whole--talked so long about
it, and invented so many reasons to prove what I said, that one fine day
I found myself convinced of its futility. So all you had to do was to
breathe on a house of cards.
GUSTAV. Pardon me for recalling what you said at the beginning of
our talk--that she had never taken anything from you.
ADOLPH. She doesn't nowadays. Because there is nothing more to
take.
GUSTAV. The snake being full, it vomits now.
ADOLPH. Perhaps she has been taking a good deal more from me than
I have been aware of?
GUSTAV. You can be sure of that. She took when you were not
looking, and that is called theft.
ADOLPH. Perhaps she never did educate me?
GUSTAV. But you her? In all likelihood! But it was her trick to make
it appear the other way to you. May I ask how she set about educating
you?
ADOLPH. Oh, first of all--hm!
GUSTAV. Well?
ADOLPH. Well, I---
GUSTAV. No, we were speaking of her.
ADOLPH. Really, I cannot tell now.
GUSTAV. Do you see!
ADOLPH. However--she devoured my faith also, and so I sank further

and further down, until you came along and gave me a new faith.
GUSTAV. [Smiling] In sculpture?
ADOLPH. [Doubtfully] Yes.
GUSTAV. And have you really faith in it? In this abstract, antiquated
art that dates back to the childhood of civilisation? Do you believe that
you can obtain your effect by pure form--by the three dimensions--tell
me? That you can reach the practical mind of our own day, and convey
an illusion to it, without the use of colour--without colour, mind
you--do you really believe that?
ADOLPH. [Crushed] No!
GUSTAV. Well, I don't either.
ADOLPH. Why, then, did you say you did?
GUSTAV. Because I pitied you.
ADOLPH. Yes, I am to be pitied! For now I am bankrupt! Finished!--
And worst of all: not even she is left to me!
GUSTAV. Well, what could you do with her?
ADOLPH. Oh, she would be to me what God was before I became an
atheist: an object that might help me to exercise my sense of
veneration.
GUSTAV. Bury your sense of veneration and let something else grow
on top of it. A little wholesome scorn, for instance.
ADOLPH. I cannot live without having something to respect---
GUSTAV. Slave!
ADOLPH.--without a woman to respect and worship!
GUSTAV. Oh, HELL! Then you had better take back your God--if you
needs must have something to kow-tow to! You're a fine atheist, with
all that superstition about woman still in you! You're a fine free-thinker,
who dare not think freely about the dear ladies! Do you know what that
incomprehensible, sphinx-like, profound something in your wife really
is? It is sheer stupidity!--Look here: she cannot even distinguish
between th and t. And that, you know, means there is something wrong
with the mechanism. When you look at the case, it looks like a
chronometer, but the works inside are those of an ordinary cheap
watch.--Nothing but the skirts-that's all! Put trousers on her, give her a
pair of moustaches of soot under her nose, then take a good, sober look
at her, and listen to her in the same manner: you'll find the instrument
has another sound to it. A phonograph, and nothing else--giving yon

back your own words, or those of other people-- and always in diluted
form. Have you ever looked at a naked woman- -oh yes, yes, of course!
A youth with over-developed breasts; an under-developed man; a child
that has shot up to full height and then stopped growing in other
respects; one who is chronically anaemic: what can you expect of such
a creature?
ADOLPH. Supposing all that to be true--how can it be possible that I
still think her my equal?
GUSTAV. Hallucination--the hypnotising power of skirts! Or--the two
of you may actually have become equals. The levelling process has
been finished. Her capillarity has brought the water in both tubes to the
same height.--Tell me [taking out his watch]: our talk has now lasted
six hours, and your wife ought soon to be here. Don't you think we had
better stop, so that you can get a rest?
ADOLPH. No, don't leave me! I don't dare to be alone!
GUSTAV. Oh, for a little while only--and then the lady will come.
ADOLPH. Yes, she is coming!--It's all so queer! I long for her, but I
am afraid of her. She pets me, she is tender to me, but there is