Compromise

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 390, 13 December 1946, Page 33

Compromise

WHAT fun it is to compromise, and fool around with any bloody thing beneath that bright inferno called the sun, or that pale ball that bowls around the night. I think it was the so-pat Emerson who said the art of living was to skate upon the surface and forget the dark and gloomy depths beneath one’s feet. The bright abyss of soaring blue above is easily ignored: you need not look and then you will not fall and cannot be submerged in oceans of infinity. OW cute a thing it is to compromise! smooth surfaces for all and lots of fun and games: Step up! Step up! You nize people! All prices cut-you can’t afford to miss! You can acclaim the truth and write with spit and polish: pose in paint, in purple, pink and cobalt, cubes and coils; in female forms whose guts are Paris gowns that drip untidily from handled drawers. And unintelligible poetry is quite another thing; be cryptic and you won’t be bum. With Eliot shake a dead geranium. To expounds a profitable gambitto compromise sincerity with fashion, to introduce art to the artificial, and substitute sensation for emotion, to compromise im life and live with caution; adulterate all marriage with discretion. Vowed in a church one has no faith in, fidelity can follow fornication; compromise in sex with contraception: propagate by accident and then compromise with parenthood again. VERYTHING for eleven-pence-ha’-penny! Leviathan reduction sale of life! Art silk, art feelings and art anything? If you are careful you can get it cheapcheap love without responsibility, and friends so cheap there is no obligation, ideals without a tear or a discomfort, ideas that have no corresponding action. Compromise is the sweet song I sing: the sirens heaved no sweeter sounding breath: but pardon me for mentioning the thingyou'll find you cannot compromise with death,

Gwen

Hawthorn