It’s quite natural that anyone who enters a casino becomes a little mad. All games of chance cause a pleasant madness, which takes us back to the time of Gods and poems.
Our wisdom, insofar as we can gain wisdom, comes from foresight, that is, from knowledge of laws and of cause and effect. For harvests to grow we have to sow, not pray; we know that tyres are worn out by taking bends at high speeds and by braking, not by some malicious spirit. So we learn to appreciate the means by thinking of the end, and to accept a small hardship in order to avoid a greater. This is what reason is, and how it leads us to labour and saving our efforts.
But human beings haven’t always lived like this; for the succession of causes and effects is often invisible, and because the causes intersect. We can sow and then reap nothing; we can die through being over-prudent, and save ourselves through lack of prudence; smoke suffocates humans and preserves ham. I imagine that human beings lived a long time in the universe the way we live in our dreams; which is why they couldn’t know that a dream is just a dream; which is why they believed the dead return, and any one thing can follow any another through the force of desire; they saw the world as a battle of desires. From which come poetry, idleness and prayer.
musée d’art Kimbell, Fort Worth (États-Unis)
That naive savage is now a long way behind us; but yet he lives within, for life forgets nothing; life is like a bobbin spooling a thread; today’s thread hides yesterday’s. And then wisdom is often a bore; one might even say it always is; it’s boring to wait, to count and to measure the means. It’s a life reined in and champing at the bit. And we love poetry and obedient images; we regret not having wished upon a star. All nursery stories stir our hearts.
Roulette should be considered a marvellous invention, which re-establishes disorder among things. For foresight becomes impossible, and labour has no part to play; one can, quite reasonably, fear everything and hope for everything. The labourer who arrives at the eleventh hour receives as much as the others, and sometimes even more. Prudence is scorned; justice is driven off, and smiling Hope reigns once more over human beings.
19 août 1907
P. d’un Normand, no. 532,
English translation copyright © Michel Petheram
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