Jurgen | Page 3

or no King

Jurgen should be relegated to limbo. And when the judges were
prepared for judging, there came into the court a great tumblebug,
rolling in front of him his loved and properly housed young ones. With
the creature came pages, in black and white, bearing a sword, a staff
and a lance.
This insect looked at Jurgen, and its pincers rose erect in horror. The
bug cried to the three judges, "Now, by St. Anthony! this Jurgen must
forthwith be relegated to limbo, for he is offensive and lewd and
lascivious and indecent."
"And how can that be?" says Jurgen.
"You are offensive," the bug replied, "because this page has a sword
which I choose to say is not a sword. You are lewd because that page
has a lance which I prefer to think is not a lance. You are lascivious
because yonder page has a staff which I elect to declare is not a staff.
And finally, you are indecent for reasons of which a description would
be objectionable to me, and which therefore I must decline to reveal to
anybody."
"Well, that sounds logical," says Jurgen, "but still, at the same time, it
would be no worse for an admixture of common-sense. For you
gentlemen can see for yourselves, by considering these pages fairly and
as a whole, that these pages bear a sword and a lance and a staff, and
nothing else whatever; and you will deduce, I hope, that all the
lewdness is in the insectival mind of him who itches to be calling these
things by other names."
The judges said nothing as yet. But they that guarded Jurgen, and all
the other Philistines, stood to this side and to that side with their eyes
shut tight, and all these said: "We decline to look at the pages fairly and
as a whole, because to look might seem to imply a doubt of what the
tumblebug has decreed. Besides, as long as the tumblebug has reasons
which he declines to reveal, his reasons stay unanswerable, and you are
plainly a prurient rascal who are making trouble for yourself."
"To the contrary," says Jurgen, "I am a poet, and I make literature."

"But in Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for yourself are
synonyms," the tumblebug explained. "I know, for already we of
Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers of literature. Yes,
there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it: then
I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those
annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and
battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too,
I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later
there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's
suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature:
indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he
had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a
disgusting trick to play on me, I consider. Still, these are the only three
detected makers of literature that have ever infested Philistia, thanks be
to goodness and my vigilance, but for both of which we might have
been no more free from makers of literature than are the other
countries."
"Now, but these three," cried Jurgen, "are the glory of Philistia: and of
all that Philistia has produced, it is these three alone, whom living ye
made least of, that to-day are honored wherever art is honored, and
where nobody bothers one way or the other about Philistia."
"What is art to me and my way of living?" replied the tumblebug,
wearily. "I have no concern with art and letters and the other lewd idols
of foreign nations. I have in charge the moral welfare of my young,
whom I roll here before me, and trust with St. Anthony's aid to raise in
time to be God-fearing tumblebugs like me, delighting in what is
proper to their nature. For the rest, I have never minded dead men being
well-spoken-of. No, no, my lad: once whatever I may do means nothing
to you, and once you are really rotten, you will find the tumblebug
friendly enough. Meanwhile I am paid to protest that living persons are
offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent, and one must live."
Then the Philistines who stood to this side and to that side said in
indignant unison: "And we, the reputable citizenry of Philistia, are not
at all in sympathy with those who would take any protest against the

tumblebug as a justification of what they are pleased to call art.