Then one of the following days Opula gave an explanation of the whole complicated matter which, besides being clearly understandable, was so contrary to all my beliefs and knowledge that it took me a long time to come to my senses, at least as much as it takes to organize one's thoughts.
My mistress was visiting bullock colonies being built and allowed me to accompany her. In the flickering, green light, a whole row of Babel towers under construction swayed precariously - the work of masses of stubbornly and tirelessly working bulls of the Capillaria headquarters of its new suburb : individually-105- each of them is being made a sky-scraping ladder, so many attempts of a single thought to reach the surface of the sea at the bottom of which these unhappy worms work, fight and perish, forgetting again that they can never reach their goal. We also went inside one of the towers: my mistress expertly looked around and declared that this building, from the point of view of the oihás , would be completed in a few days. Three walls are already high enough; if the fourth reaches them, he will notify his girlfriends that they can come with the incense.
It was touching to see the hustle and bustle of the little bulls , their hustle and bustle, and their efforts. They didn't stop working even when Opula appeared: some of them just got off the ledges, came over, poked around, their little eyes widening. "They are watching me!" said Opula with a smile, then, explaining her words, she added that among these little creatures there are artistic instincts who decorate the walls of the tower being built with drawings: these drawings always, without exception, depict oihás in strange situations, which allows us to conclude that in these little monsters there is some dawning inkling of beauty and happiness,-106-about the true purpose of life. These little artists are looked down upon and mocked by the working bullocks - Opula , imitating them with voice-mimic words, made me understand that their fellow bullocks call them "religious" and "believers" : and the image depicting the oihá is an "idol" to "god". The artists themselves indicate the meaning of the figure with the sounds "fate" and "fate".
From this I understood what Opula found natural, but it was incomprehensible to me until now: why she does not recognize the only enemy and usurper of the bulls' work, why the oihá -ts do not fight against him instead of fighting each other. Bullock considers oihá to be a superior being, a metaphysical force , an abstract concept that includes life, so fighting against it, according to his strange meaning, would be like fighting against oneself and against life . The naive artist, among them as well as among people, calls this force a god: he draws it, makes a sacrifice to it with his work to propitiate it and make it listen.
I looked at such an idol image: - bulls were kneeling in front of it, who, when Opula appeared, broke apart, pointed at the image and pushed each other. I would only know by circumscribing -107-to tell what the subject of these two pictures depicting oihá was: I can say this much about it that if I wanted to publish a copy of it in the text of this work, the censorship of any country would not allow this publication. In short, the picture represented a common obscenity, an unspecified operation: (in addition to the two oihás , there were also some bulls on it) the kind with which lustful men used to amuse their little ladies, pulling them out of hidden pockets at crucial moments, hoping to ignite their lady's imagination. .
I turned away with contempt and disgust and asked Opulá to look instead at the masses of sweating and working bullocks . I used the opportunity to symbolize with them what I had so far tried in vain to instill respect in him, what I called men's work, men's understanding, men's will. Here, I said in a raised voice: there is something that means more than happiness and joy, for which one can sacrifice one's life - some sacred vocation with an unknown purpose: duty. Kant says: above my head is the starry sky and within me is the categorical imperative . These little creatures raise a tower to reach - you destroy the fruits of their labor every time, but -108-what does it do they start again, with faith and trust. And this hopeless fight is not more beautiful, no more sublime, than to indulge in the pleasures of life in a softened way - is this denial of life for the sake of a more beautiful, higher life not more worthy of the soul than resigning oneself to the infinite present without wishing for a great future?
My mistress looked at me in astonishment and remarked that I have such exclamations about space and time that she finds extremely boring: she asks me to stop. High and deep, past and future - these are nonsense, since we do not experience (enjoy, as he expressed it) any of them - because the oiha is not deep and high, but where it is, that is, in its own soul, in the middle of the world, eternally present and always happy. As for bullsAs for his desire for height, he doesn't think it's funny or varied at all. Because what could they achieve, in the best case scenario, assuming that one of the towers could be completed? They would get to the surface of the sea - they would get to the land, to the country that I told him about, and where I supposedly come from. But where in this country is that higher, happier way of life for them? They are slightly larger up there-109-the bulls are ok , but basically, from everything I've presented, you can see that they're just as stupid (unhappy) if not more stupid than the one below. They are perhaps somewhat more confident, that's all and the fact that, if possible, they recognize their situation even less and admit it to themselves.
What I said about marriage is essentially nothing more than bull breeding in Capillaria . It's very natural that our bullocks hide in pipes - our oihás want it that way, not tolerating that they too arouse desires by flaunting their physical qualities and support themselves for free on this basis. By the way, you can prove, from my own testimony, that even our poor bullocks , in the depths of their souls, regard the Oihás as deities, and the denial of their superiority is only the unconscious feeling that they were inferior.
I asked him to explain his words completely deadpan. Opula presented me with my own testimony, in her understanding. I admitted, so to speak, that the "women's question", as we call it, - apart from the few feminists, whom he does not even consider women, but only stunted men - was dealt with by so-called "flame minds": so how to solve this question,-110-which women solve simply with their existence and life, without any difficulty - at least among men, they require a fiery mind, intellectual excellence, self-sacrificing diligence and effort. How is it that the mystery of the female soul is always dissected by men, and the character of a woman is analyzed by men: the great achievements in the field of this serious science are attributed to men, while women provide data only for this science? I wanted to prove the inferiority of women's intellect, the spiritual poverty of women, by saying that they cannot even define themselves - to have an idea about them, we need the fiery mind of a man, because they do not have their own confession about their own souls. On this basis, it could also be said that God is an intellect inferior to man, because he did not give himself a biography and a description of his character: what we know or believe about it and how it works has been discovered and determined by humans - it itself listens and acts. But the true believer is aware that his silence and our prayer find meaning in the relationship that exists between God and man - that we need God, but God does not need us.-111-
He firmly asserts that our great connoisseurs of women would rather be women than connoisseurs of women - and to Strindberg and the other pessimists who see the meanness of woman in the fact that they would rather live their own lives than worry about what kind of person Strindberg might be and whether could make him happy, - for them the grapes are simply sour. Anyway, it seems that through all the fanciful theories and ideas, some anonymous longing resides in our bullsin our countries, so that they too can become women, "get down" and leave their towers of Babel. I myself admitted that feminine men are more loved by women than masculine women by men - what else does this mean than a desire for a uniform human type, a desire for "degradation", "sinking", "effeminization" - in short, the suspicious homesickness of all earthly people towards Capillaria, the bottom of the sea, which so far only I, Gulliver, have been allowed to know, and where no single gender lives, happily and serenely, Nietzsche's Übermensch - but women are more like this one than the men.
This same vague instinct is not only not refuted, but rather proved by what it does-112-I was talking about "same-sex love", this "genderlessness", which occurs between men and women in our country, in the form of love degeneration: - with the difference that while the women love each other, just like in Capillaria, as women - until then, the homosexual man looks for a "feminine" man as his partner, gives him female names, dresses him in women's clothes, so much so that the question arises, if he is already looking for the woman in the man - why doesn't he turn directly to the woman? And why does the seducer I mentioned show a naked female body to the woman he wants to make love: isn't it for the same reason why bulls paint their idols? "After all, if they believe that the woman is growing spiritually ."if he needed the man as much as the man does the woman - if he needed her, he would not only use her as a tool, but at the expense of other tools - then he would try to inflame her with the seductive exposure of his own nakedness. We jokingly use the word that the woman shared her "favors" with this and that, and we don't realize how serious it is in reality.
Saint Anthony was attacked by women in the desert and he turned to God for help - recognizing the woman as God when he sent an equal force-113-into a fight against him, feeling that he himself, in his sublime humanity, would be weak against that being, whom we do not even want to recognize as human otherwise. But why do we consider men's longing for women tragic and a woman gasping for a man comical, if not for the same reason why we also find striving for perfection tragic?
Opula fell silent and I, who had been watching with my head down and mockingly, gathering my counter-arguments, suddenly looked up at her. Her face was calm and cold, but so shockingly beautiful that I was speechless. I stood there with a pounding heart for a few moments, then I cried out restlessly, trembling and painfully:
- But what is this, what is this - what does this confusion, this desire, this indefinite and diverse will, this longing for freedom in the hearts of the unhappy mean? Tell me, I don't understand, give me a sign, show me the way to go!
Opula bent down and with a practiced and skillful movement of her hand caught one of the small bullocks . He lifted it up and held it before my eyes. It was the first time I had seen this strange little monster up close.-114-
"Look here," he said calmly, and his transparent, pale yellow fingers, like tiny sparks, tightly gripped the kicking animal's waist. "See this confusing, complicated little machine?" Originally, as you explain, and as our legends prove, it was a single organ, a single purposeful part of the great whole, which you, up there, humans, we, down here, ohwe call it, i.e. Woman. His shape in rough outlines still reminds us of his origin, if the description, as you described the earthly "man" in the essence of his appearance, is to be believed. This organ, this part of the whole, separated from us and began to develop separately. And he equipped himself with everything that belongs only to the Whole and not to the Part: with eyes and ears and a mouth - look, he has fins and wings too - he wanted to unite everything in himself, he thought that he would be perfect if he took on the form of everything perfect . However, the wisdom of life cannot be surpassed by those who want to be wiser than life - and those who want to hurry faster than nature cannot hurry in a different way than nature - they can only overtake it, but in their own area.
"Don't you understand this clear speech?" from your ears-115-what you have been given in life, you can make a more perfect ear: for you have telephones and can extend your sense of hearing a thousand miles - and you can make your eyes a more perfect eye - for you can see the moon up close with your binoculars and the swamp swimming in the water like a whale, if you equip your eyes with glass. And your feet, which are meant to move your body from its standing position, you can equip with railways and airplanes to fulfill the purpose for which nature assigned it a thousand times more perfectly. Behold, the natural path of perfection towards happiness, – will, reason and insight in the service of nature, a holy trinity with which nature surpasses itself when it manifests itself in its most perfect form, in man. All we need is to be aware of it: what the parts are for, before we start perfecting it? Because those who want to see with their ears and hear with their eyes have strayed from this path and will not achieve results. This worm, this particle of it, is wonderfulto oihá , he rebelled against the Whole and thought he could compete with it, make it redundant, replace it, catch up with it.
"Imagine that one's ears would rebel."-116-against him, he would break away from it, become independent and start a new life. No matter how hard he tries, he really can't do anything but hear - he'll never really see , he only deceives himself, he becomes a ridiculously distorted, companionless, unhappy animal - he doesn't get what he wanted and loses what he had: in his hopeless effort, that see, he's going deaf. And so would every other organ that wants something else than what it was created for: if the eye wants to hear and the ear wants to see.
"But the meaning..." I interrupted.
"Indeed, I mean," Opula continued , smiling. "What do you think it's for?" Can you tell me exactly? I'm telling you, not what you're using it for. That complicated, extraordinarily delicate organ that vibrates there, secretly, invisible even in our delicate body, in the graceful bony vessel of the skull, emits a thousand silk threads from itself to every part of the body, gathering joy and pain together and dividing them. And he tries to process everything he has collected into joy and good feeling and happiness - even the pain, if you don't interfere with his work and don't force him to deal with other than what it is meant for.-117-
"But self-awareness... the feeling of the Self... the intense instinct to know the truth... the soul..."
Opula smiled.
- He who seeks something for the Self is not seeking the truth, only his own truth. Leave the Self - we were talking about an organ, which you called the brain - and this is not the Self, only a part of it - if it is the most complicated and perfect part. Or what do you call it over there - do you call your soul "I"? No: " my soul " is what you call it, admitting that it is not you, just a part of you, like you say "my hand" or "my foot". Leave the "I" - with this complicated organ you call the soul, you will never know who it is... But why are you worried? If you use your hands and feet without remorse for what they are for: use your soul in the same way - for this one being, whom we in a happy exclamation oihá, and you rather dryly called him Man, for the happy observation of the source of all joy, beauty and intoxication and ascension to God, the form of all possibilities - because in him are all possibilities, just as-118-he stands before you, hand, foot and soul. This is the work and task of the soul - it was created for this. So finish your work as long as you can and then rest - and then a new soul will come to stimulate our immortal body to new joy - because the soul is mortal, only the body is immortal.
- Man... soul... body... joy and sorrow... oiha ... - I stammered -... but if this is all there is... to whom should I entrust... to which organ... who should deal with Humanity... the great species... my fellow human beings... women and men... the Humanity whose has a vocation on this Earth... You only talk about Man... the body... hands, feet... eyes and ears... the five senses that serve the body, man... you call the soul the sixth... but then who will care about Humanity if the do you reserve a soul for Man?
Opula smiled.
"Have you forgotten the seventh?"
I looked at him.
"Love..." I stuttered, devastated.
Opula smiled and held up the squirming bullok in her hand .
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