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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 1940)
4 THE DAILY NEBRASKA Wednesday, February 21, J 940 Article Contributions from the student body. S Verse "There is no greater pleasure than to be going to the University of Paris in this year of our Lord 1215!" Thaddeus Angers ironically blew on his cold fingers, and looked out of the cloth-covered window that opened on the Rue du Fouare. Jean Dubois nodded soberly from the floor where he was at tempting to get his sabots on with one hand. Hia serious, thin face worried over the sabot, but he seemed to be thinking of some thing else. "Oh, come now, Jean!" Thaddeus said. "It really is a great life. Must you be always preoccupied with the future and truth and such nonsense?" He gulped his break fast wine and repeated. "Yes, it's a great life, and if you don't get those shoes on we'll miss Guis card's lecture, bad as it is." Onward to school. They rushed pcllmell out of tho little garret into the narrow Street of Straw, through groups of noisy, boisterous students, toward the hall of Jacques Guiscard, Mas ter of Trinquet College, and lec turer of anatomy. Jean, sober-faced and earnest, ppoke as if he were resuming a conversation. "Whatever you say, Thad, you really do agree with me. Jacques Guiscard does not know a straw about anatomy. All we've ever learned from him were the words of Galen and Aristotle." Thaddeus, with his eyes on the town girls who passed, replied, "Who is there but Galen ? He has always been the authority. We cannot doubt his word; that would be a sacrilege!" "Galen is no oracle!" Jean mut tered vehemently. "He did not know everything! He never dis sected a human being. How can we tell what is inside us if we don't look?" "That we can never do," Thad deus avowed. "Our church forbids it. We would be imprisoned and excommunicated if we were sus pected of even thinking of such a thing!" Mutual understanding. He eyed Jean warily. They had been together two years at school, and they understood one another. He knew that Jean with his ca pacity for taking himself seriously would stop at nothing if he felt he could gain useful knowledge. Only Jean's reverence for his church, and the deep-seated devout faith that he had absorbed from his first day on earth kept the brazen spirit of scinece that was his from upsetting their lives. Thad also knew that because he was himself insatiably curious he would be forced to help Jean in any experiment. Jean, with his dark eyes blank, pondered within himself. Guiscard was an old woman. Cowardly, mercenary, with an incurable thirst for gold, he ignored the chal lenge to learn more about ana tomy. His classes were digests of Galen, Issac. and Constantinus. He had never touched the knife nor the scissors. What was needed was a man who would not be afraid to defy the narrow dog matic views of the world. They needed someone who could think. Someone who would think. Prince and pauper. They entered the Master's hall and seated themselves on the floor. All the students, prince and pau per alike, sat on the straw-strewn floor. Guiscard, arrogant anu lo quacious, rambled on from the onlv chair in the room. He spoke so swiftly that the students could not copy his notes. That was sly! they could not tell how much he renatcd himself. He read in a sleep-producing tone, from Galen's Pantegnl, once brilliant ana orig inal, now so powerful that it had stifled all thought. He droned on and on. .Tenn fidtroted and wrlcclcd with his impatience at the words of the learned Master. He shook his head uneasily and seemed ready to hurst into antrrv contradictions, but Thad jerked at h's cloak and he subsided rebeuiousiy. Alter an, hadn't they, in the secrecy of their room, dissected mice and birds? Hadn't they proved without doubt that Guiscard was teaching a false doctrine? They knew him for a revered hypocrite, and they could do nothing. Class finally over. Three long hours of it. Jean's teeth were clenched in a soundless fury when they reached the street. His eyes blazed with resentment at the injustice of being forced to be lieve the absurd formulas of Galen. He had forgotten for a moment his creed and his church. At the doorway of the Studium he stopped and turned with ven om. "That That!" he said. "That is what we starve ourselves for! It won't do! Guiscard is a lazy liar! For all we know, so was Galen. I'm going to find out the truth!" "How can we do it?" Thad, ready for excitement was instantly at his side. He scrutinized his friend's face, saw the fanatacism there, and hesitated for he knew what was in Jean's mind. "No," he said, "I can't do it!" Planning dissection. "Do as you like!" Jean flung at him defiantly. "Whether I lose my soul, my mind, and my life, I'm going to know the truth. By the Mother Mary! I'm going to per form a human anatomy, and..." He noticed the relenting gleam in Thad's eyes. "You're going to help me." They ate their lunch as if it were their last. Thad's usual high spirits lay frozen in his heart by Tess of A review Thomas Hardy and I get off on the wrong foot from the very start. in Tess of the d'Urbervilles he is apparently making Fate synony mous with coincidence. He pro poses that chance happenings di rect a man's destiny, that man is a victim of coincidental circum stances and has no control over his life or actions. With this assertion Hnrdy enn not get in on the ground floor with me, for I choose to believe that I have a free will to a certain ex tent. 1 want to believe there is a difference between Fate and coin cidence. The question of fate is an un answerable one on which, I have come to the conclusion, one can only take an arbitrary position neither side being able to advance any evidence as proof. The fact that coincidence does occur is no logical argument for the proposi tion that it was fate to be predestined and all laid out just waiting for the principals to come along and meet it. Hardy, the fatalist. So Thomas Hardy takes the side of the fatalists who blame their all on external circumstances, and my aversion to his fundamental idea spoils Tess, herself, for me. I consider Tess an ineffectual protagonist of Hardy's alleged aim, but he has much better argument in the character of Angel Clare. Hardy plays God to his characters, though it was no doubt pity that drove him to create and write of them. God is evidently a fiend, who confers upon you;h a roseate outlook as a trick, a friend who gives you the illusion that you're not being tricked, but never lets your hopes be realized. Tess d'Urberville is portrayed as the innocent young girl who is mangled by the hand of fate. Tess Is a puppet. Tess is a puppet. She has been niade to order, she has specifica Truth and Rebellion for the unreasoning horror of what they were about to do. All the ominous and awful powers of the universe were watching them, waiting to see if they would have the towering presumption to car ry out their purpose an act ex pressly forbidden to man. Is not the spiritless body a possession of God's ? To tamper with the secrets of life, even the curious seeker after truth must beware! Where, a corpse? Jean ate little, his mind preoc cupied witht the plans for obtain ing a corpse. They could have a body for the trouble of picking it up if they were not seen at the pauper-burying grounds outside the city. The transportation of their gruesome package to their room would be more difficult; but would he have the courage to cut his way into the inviolable se crets of God? Jean made the sign of the cross many times that day, wrestling with his own spirit for freedom. Could he cast aside the great mass of religious belief that was burned deep in his soul ? Could he ferret out the ageless secrets of life and death, look at them. Sombre spectre Sunset found them in the little tavern beneath the chaste, puri fying shadow of the Cathedral. The sombre spectre . of the un known had descended upon the table. They talked in low whisp ers while the comely barmaids looked askance at the two who were usually so cheerful and friendly. "We've got to do it tonight, Jean! Tomorrow is St. Thomas' fete. We'll work the whole day." the D'Urbervilles of Hardy's fiction child tions. Humans aren't made to order. Tess is. She imprcsesd me as a stock character the sweet young thing seduced and forever miserable therefrom. What I ob ject to primarily is not her char acter, but the fact that her career is handled by coincidence. The most important moments of her life the occasions, that is, most vital to the plot of the novel, are purely chance happenings. When she is still virgin and in nocent, gamboling on the green with the other maids, and Angel Clare came in to dance with them, he dances with all except her. Coincidence so what? What rea son does that give me to believe that because of this incident, Tess is, watcd to go on to her doom? I am sorely tempeted to believe that the coincidence was placed there os a bit of emotional play to reinforce the plot and no more. Overplayed coincidence. A flagrant misuse of coincidence is, in my estimation, the end of the letter in which Tess tried to confess her past to Angel before their marriage. She slips it under the door it goes on under the carpeting and Angel passes by oblivious. So through no fault of her own, her good intentions are thwarted, as the novel's plot necessitates, by sheer accident which in itself is no argument for its having been directed by the hand of destiny. Now Angel Clare, as I suggested before, is a much better argument for Hardy's fatalistic convictions. Angel is not governed by coin cidence. One can certainly not, for instance, say that it was coin cidence that he did not make a deliberate effort, go out of his way, to look under the carpet for the letter. Angel's destiny. No, Angel's destiny is within a Woman Knowledge Thad stopped whispering when the girl appeared with their food. "Yes," Jean replied, on the verge of hysteria. "We will get it over with now. Leave the food." Fearful of their own courage, they turned their footsteps toward the forest south of Paris. They walked slowly, scanning each face for a friend, feeling completely alone in their world. By the Sein rose the smoke of the rubble dumps. The smell of lime, eraser of memories, assailed their nostrils. In the distance the trees with their swaddling of dirty snow waited silently for the two truthseckers. I can't do it! And then, with a sudden light headed laugh, Jean stopped upon the road, and looked fearfully past Thad his face gone soft and courageless. "I can't do it," he said quietly. "I can't do it, Thad! I'm afraid!" Thad, shocked, pulled up. He at tempted to encourage Jean, but the dread clutched at his throat and he managed only a weak. "But we must, Jean I They looked woefully at one an other, and sat at the side of the road wrapped in mutual horror pondering. Thad hit upon an idea. Jean had been studying too hard. The stu dent riot with the townspeople only a few days before, his bitter enmity with Guiscard all had combined to bring Jean's nervous mind to a pitch that he could not control. "Jean," he said, "we've been tak him, in his own nature, his own mental constitution, in his educa tion and in his heresy in breaking away from that education in his own choices of the sort of ma terial with which to stimulate his nund, and in the consequent con victions of right, morality, be havior which he developed. Per haps ne was fated to work out his life as he did, as a result of his heritage of mind and body-at least the course which his life took was in causal relationship with the kind of person he was. Angel may have been a skunk, but, because of his nature and his background -thru no fault of his own, for have the fatalists any more reason for saying that it was his fault (as opposed to the in nocence of Tess) than I have for saying that it wasn't. Hardy's salvation. The fatalist's can say Angel acts as he does because he is what he is-and all that has come before predestined his action in deserting Tess. This is the dotermlnist point of view and it is the salvation of Hardy s novel. How well Angel's career as a skunk is worked out to last! his great love was not Tess, it was himself and his "superior" idea's of the gooQ in life. He was con sistently rigorous in his demand upon the virtuosity of others, ex cused himself from guilt and was repulsed by the thought of leveling himself down, so to speak, with those who failed him. All that he did he did because it was like him to do so yes, indeed Oli-my Dar-ling Clemen-tine How I missed her How I missed her How I missed my Clemen tine Till I kissed her lit-tle sis-tcr Ing ourselves too seriously. I know a new tavern where th wine ia cheap and the girls are pretty. Come on. We'll forget our tum bles!" V And the terror-stricken Jean let himself be dragged away. Wine and women. They raised their glasses many times in the brightly lanterned Bleu Loup, and the girls who laughed with them were pleasant and full of life. Somewhere in Paris that night they picked up a friend. As they staggered home down the narrow street in the early morning, the strains of some bawdy tavern song rose from their throats. Their new found friend, with an arm over the shoulder of each, had to he dragged along, for he seemed lorg ago to have lost interest in the frivolities. They struggled into the little garret room and laid their com panion at full-length upon the only table. They carefully covered him and dropped, still fully clothed, to c 1 o r The chimes of the Abbey Saiut Genevieve were brazening the ai with a holy resonance when Jean an stirred. He rolled over and looke covertly at his sleeping friend. He tickled the prominent broken nose with a wisp of straw until, with a roar, Thad rose to battle. They wrestled furiously on the cot. A powerful kick sent Jean surging out on the floor. He clutched handfuls of straw and plunged back into the melee. .. .love a pretty lass. y lass. , Breathing hard, the e two rested :r foolishlyy went to tlf looking at each other then Jean arose and form on the table, whistling a tune of the night before. "Ho, I will love a pretty lass, Ana we will drink another glass. . ' "I have a fear sir." he said. takins the nose of an orator, and addressing the prone figure on the tame, mat you are going to make a liar out of Guiscard. Maybe you will heln turn old Galen over in his grave. At any rate, sir, your worth has trenled since you left this lovely world. En garde, m'sicu!" He removed the cloak from the corpse on the table and skillfully as though he had made the mo tions in his mind a thousand times made the preliminary marks of the scalpel on the bared dia phram. Thad's recollection. Thad rolled to a sitting position, his blurred mind trying vainly to recollect and comprehend scenes of the previous night. How they suddenly left the tav ern and gone to the burying grounds. How they had painstak ingly selected a cadaver from the open graves, and how they had staggered home in the open hold ing it up between them! and come away unscathed ? Would the great God above let him, little Jean Du bois, pluck from the dead the in formation that he wanted? He felt his desire for truth to be like a pale iris growing in a patch of weeds: Weeds that he could not fight Miraculously, a wicker-covered bottle appeared betweeen his knees. He pulled the cork, watch ing Jean with intent solence. With the bottle opened, and tipped, and appreciated, he moved to the chair by Jean's side. "Holy Mary, Mother of Christ!" he murmured fervently. "How you? You re not afraid or an thing!" "Ah. hut I was afraid last night." Jean said half seriously. "I was afraid of Maria. V .hat lovely eyes she has. I but in se the lesser of my two foaist" ed I a V