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T H E R I F T IN T H E L U T E
The Rift in the Lute
Attuning Poetry and Philosophy

MAXIMILIAN DE GAYNESFORD

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© Maximilian de Gaynesford 2017
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2017
Impression: 1
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a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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 Preface

This book is about poetry and philosophy, whose quarrel is ancient and modern.
The antipathy takes many forms, from courteous indifference to brute animosity.
Those who love both are used to the options. Either keep your interests in poetry
and philosophy separate, insulated from each other, or restrict your attention to the
privileged few places where philosophical forms of poetry lie down with poetic
forms of philosophy. But these are dodges, however prudent, and never satisfying.
There is a more adventurous strategy. Steer straight for the eye of the storm, where
animosity is at its most tempestuous, and find there the resources to bring poetry
and philosophy together.
Work on this approach has indeed been somewhat stormy, so I thank my family
and friends for their encouragement. It has also taken a long time—I am teaching
undergraduates who were not born when I began—so I am grateful to the Press for
its patience and to two anonymous readers for their guidance.
I began the final version soon after the death of my friend Sam Hood. For twenty
years, Sam was the first with whom I tried out ideas and the last to relinquish
discussion of them. He made the most vigorous philosophizing exercise of the most
affectionate friendship. I dedicate this book to Sam’s memory.
Oxford
3 June 2016
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/3/2017, SPi

Acknowledgements

For permission to reprint copyright material, the author and publisher are grateful
to the following: to J. H. Prynne for permission to quote from his ‘Thoughts on the
Esterházy Uniform’; to Jeremy Hill and the literary estate of Sir Geoffrey Hill for
permission to quote from Geoffrey Hill The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy,
The Triumph of Love, and King Log (‘September Song’; ‘Ovid in the Third Reich’);
to Brian Keeble for permission to quote from Kathleen Raine ‘Short Poems 1994’;
to Faber and Faber Ltd for permission to quote from T. S. Eliot ‘The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock’, from Douglas Dunn Elegies, from Thom Gunn ‘Considering
the Snail’, and from The Testament of Cresseid by Robert Henryson, translated by
Seamus Heaney; to Carcanet Press for permission to quote from Austin Clarke
‘Eighteenth Century Harp Songs’ and ‘A Curse’; to Bloodaxe for permission to
quote from Roy Fisher ‘It is Writing’, and from Basil Bunting ‘Against the Tricks of
Time’.
Some of the arguments and interpretations developed here were first essayed in
‘Incense and Insensibility: Austin on the “non-seriousness” of Poetry’ (Ratio, 22,
2009), ‘The Seriousness of Poetry’ (Essays in Criticism, 59, 2009), ‘Speech acts and
Poetry’ (Analysis, 70, 2010), ‘How Not To Do Things With Words’ (The British
Journal of Aesthetics, 51, 2011), ‘Speech acts, responsibility and commitment in
poetry’ (The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry ed. Peter
Robinson, Oxford University Press, 2012) and ‘Poetic utterances: Attuning poetry
and philosophy’ (Literary Studies and Philosophy of Literature ed. Andrea Selleri and
Philip Gaydon, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). The author is grateful to the editors
and publishers.
Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders prior to
publication. If notified, the publisher will be pleased to rectify any errors or
omissions at the earliest opportunity.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/3/2017, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/2/2017, SPi

Contents

List of Abbreviations ix

Introduction: What is Attunement? 1

I. SENSE A ND SENSITIV ITY

1. Austin’s Remarks 37
2. Poets and Critics 49
3. Philosophers 59
4. What Matters 71
5. Truth 83
6. Action 97
7. Responsibility 107

II. DOING THINGS WITH A TTUNEMENT

8. Chaucer-Type 119
9. Elaborating the Type 135
10. Four Features 145
11. Four Poets 159
12. Shakespeare’s Sonnets 173
13. Phrasing 185
14. Naming 193
15. Securing 203
16. Doing 221
17. Doing Time 235
Conclusion: Weaving New Webs 249

Bibliography 281
Index 293
 List of Abbreviations

Bibliographic information is kept to a minimum in the footnotes; full details are to be found
in the Bibliography. The following works, to which reference is often made, appear as
follows:

Austin J. L. Austin How To Do Things With Words ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina
Sbisà 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975)
Shakespeare The Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Sonnets and Poems ed. Colin Burrow
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
Southwell The Poems of Robert Southwell S.J. ed. James H. McDonald and Nancy
Pollard Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967)
Tacitus Annalium Ab Excessu Divi Augusti Libri III.49–51. Oxford Classical Texts
ed. C. D. Fisher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906)
Mount your attacker’s horse and ride it yourself. The only possibility.
Kafka Diaries 1922
 Introduction: What is Attunement?

I
One of Tacitus’ more disturbing tales—or do we owe it to Borges?—concerns
a poet.1
During the reign of the emperor Tiberius, a knight by the name of Clutorius
Priscus wins a certain fame in Rome as a writer of verse. Tiberius himself awards
him money for a poem, a celebre carmen mourning the death of the emperor’s
nephew Germanicus in AD 19.2 Two years later, Priscus composes another lament.
Since it takes Tiberius’ own son Drusus as its subject, the poem calls still more
deeply on the imperial gratitude. Or encroaches still more closely on the imperial
dignity, as the prudent would appreciate in precarious times.
Certainly some risk is involved on this second occasion. The subject is not, quite,
dead. Interest in the poem grows, the poet is much discussed. All very awkward
when Drusus revives, then rallies, is for a time very much alive. Poor Priscus.
Denied the death he had anticipated, and thus deprived of the audience-
multiplying obsequies, he now stands forth as a dreamer of dangerous dreams,
conspicuous for what he seems to have longed for. Rumours about the poem begin
to circulate. Already composed? Yes, if you can believe it. And a reading already
taken place? So they say, and at the home of Publius Petronius no less. Informers
fall over themselves to confirm the rumours. Witnesses are induced to come
forward. All of a sudden, the poet is arraigned before the senate, on trial for his life.
For the prosecution, Haterius Agrippa, the consul-designate. Tacitus describes
him as enervated by sleep and nocturnal debauchery, too indolent to arouse the
emperor’s fears, but an inveterate plotter of the destruction of illustrious men.3 He
seeks the death penalty. For the defence, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Augustus had
once famously discerned in him ‘the capacity for empire without the ambition
for it’.4 Lepidus urges moderation. Priscus should suffer loss of property, banishment,

1 Tacitus III.49–51. The case obviously interested Tacitus; it is one of the marked few in his Annals

for which he includes extended direct reporting of the defence speech.

2 Tacitus III.49.
3 Tacitus VI.4. If Tacitus means to include Priscus amongst the inlustribus viris Haterius Agrippa

destroyed, that would fit the historian’s sardonic commentary on what then passed for such, for Priscus
seems neither heroic nor virtuous but just rather desperately bungling.
4 Tacitus I.13; capacem sed aspernantem. Ronald Syme identifies him with the consul of AD 6 whom

Tacitus singles out for particular praise at Tacitus IV.20; Syme (1986, p. 129). But he is certainly not
M’ (i.e. Manius) Aemilius Lepidus, as the Oxford Classical Texts erroneously has it; Tacitus, p. 117.
2 Introduction: What is Attunement?

no more. For although the poet is undoubtedly responsible for his words, and
although it is odious of a member of the equestrian order to compose such a poem,
one that may pollute his own mind and the ears of those who hear it, still terms
must be set and bounds must be drawn. And the proper distinctions in this case are
clear, so Lepidus affirms: Vana a scelestis, dicta a maleficiis differunt. What is non-
serious or silly (vana) differs from what is wicked or criminal (scelestis). Things that
people say (dicta) differ from evils that people do (maleficiis).
Unfortunately for the defendant, Lepidus’ speech gains him almost no support.
A single senator, one Rubellius Blandus, is susceptible to the idea that the poem is
no wicked deed. The mood turns ugly, suddenly brutal. Despite the rhetorical
invitation, the conscript fathers treat Priscus’ poetic dicta as criminal rather than
silly. And they reject Lepidus’ second claim outright. Dicta can be things that
people do. Where they are wicked, they do not differ from evils that people do.
Crucially, they incur the same penalties.
The house passes sentence. The poet is dragged off to prison. Once there, he is
immediately put to death.

II
The issues before the senate will remain with us for the rest of the book. Issues
about seriousness: what it is for poetry to be serious and what it is to treat poetry
seriously. Issues about action: what it is to treat those responsible for poetic
utterances as doing things in saying what they say, in performing actions, in
bringing about effects.5 Issues about poetry: what work it sets itself, and how this
determines the way it is to be judged. Issues about responsibility: what poets
commit themselves to and what they may be (held) responsible for. Issues about
authority: what role a poet, their audience, and their context plays in determining
the meaning of a poem, its significance, what work it is able to achieve. And
underlying all these, issues about receptivity: what it is to be open to poetry,
exposed to its force, attuned to what it says and alive to what it does.
The trial of the poet Clutorius Priscus is a dial: we can use it to point in each of
these directions in turn. It is Tacitus’ way with the story that makes this possible.
There is stimulation, for example, in the way it tweaks and discomforts, leaves room
for complex responses. Priscus the poet is almost comically inept, for example, and
yet we can feel this while registering the full horror of his fate.6 Again, Lepidus’

5 In ordinary usage, ‘action’—like ‘act’—is used to refer to a variety of different things, for example

a particular doing, the general class of doings, the thing done, and the general class of things done. It is
not possible to adopt a more organized usage without stipulation or ugliness (usually both), and it is
not necessary either, so long as one is careful—as I try to be throughout—to make context clarify
meaning. In conformity with standard phrasing, I talk equally of utterances as doing things and of
people as doing things in uttering.
6 Not that experiencing these two feelings together is comfortable or indeed comfortably

expressible. One is apt to sound stuffy if one tries. For example, ‘Now the desire for “comic relief”
on the part of an audience is, I believe, a permanent craving of human nature; but that does not mean
that it is a craving that ought to be gratified.’ T. S. Eliot (1933, p. 41).
 Introduction: What is Attunement? 3

claims about poetry trouble us, and his attitude towards poets seems disdainful, but
we can acknowledge this while recognizing the bold independence of mind that
enables him to speak as he does. The senate’s action is repulsive, and yet we can
recognize this while acknowledging that at least its sentence seems to take poets
and poetry seriously. Deeper down, the story uncovers an underlying thought, one
that is by turns disquietingly evasive and calmingly sensible. Poetry, some poetry,
should be taken seriously, no doubt; but it is rarely, if ever, to be taken quite that
seriously.
Consider the senate first. Their behaviour is not, perhaps, so difficult to explain.
If the senators appeared to take poetry and the poet very seriously indeed, this
was not because they held either in great esteem. Nor does their action imply a
consistent view. On other occasions in these same years, the senate was willing to
give poets considerable licence.7 And there is here the first nag of a question that
will recur: whether such licence is compatible with treating poetry seriously. The
senate was acting out of fear, it seems, or at least a cowed desire to please the
emperor. It returned the verdict that he could be expected to wish for, or at least
endorse, given the circumstances.
Tiberius certainly had particular reason to be pleased. The original poem, for
which Priscus was celebrated (and rewarded), was not performed during its sub-
ject’s funeral rites. Indeed, no poetry was performed for Germanicus, no ‘effigy,
encomia, tears or grief ’. The lack of a state funeral excited gossip. It was expected
that the virtue of a noble or illustrious man would be commemorated.8 The gossip
evidently worried Tiberius a good deal.9 Tacitus lays bare the emperor’s unease in a
beautifully subtle way, avoiding commentary and simply listing the over-abundant
and conflicting reasons given out to justify and excuse the absence of a state funeral:
moderation, differences between ordinary and imperial ways of dealing with things,
the need to steel oneself to the loss, the opportunity to give priority to what
continues (i.e. the state), the concern not to spoil the populace’s enjoyment of
the Megalesian Games.10 So it may have been to put a stop to the talk, the vulgi
sermones, that Tiberius made so much of Priscus’ subsequent efforts, his ‘celebrated
poem’ in praise of the dead man.11 Clearly Priscus was fortunate that Tiberius
found his poetry politically useful in this way. The emperor might as easily have
taken offence that the poet had provided what he had not commissioned, and
indeed had so publicly justified himself for not commissioning. And if the senate
suspected Tiberius of harbouring thereafter a private resentment of the poet, it
certainly helps explain its subsequent actions.
If there is something more deeply strange here, it is surely Lepidus’ insouciance.
Tacitus gives the impression that he merely announced the principles on which his
case depended. What is non-serious or silly differs from what is wicked or criminal;
things that people say differ from evils that people do. This does give pause. Given
the seriousness of the case, the peril of the defendant, why did Lepidus not urge
his argument on the senate more forcefully? Why did he not draw on reason,

7 See, for example, the case of Gaius Cominius, occurring three years later (AD 24); Tacitus IV.31.
8 Tacitus III.5. 9 Tacitus III.6. 10 Tacitus III.6. 11 Tacitus III.6.
4 Introduction: What is Attunement?

precedent, or example to support these principles? For it was not as if Lepidus was a
fool or untried innocent. As a senator, he was experienced and clearly much-
admired. And nor did he lack influence, as a modest lapse in moral tone gives
evidence: Agrippina the Younger found it worth her while to have an affair with
him when satisfying her ‘lust for power’ and before achieving its heights, becoming
the wife of one emperor (Claudius) and the mother of another (Nero).12 Nor was
Lepidus a ‘Yes Man’ or devious manipulator, the type who might curry favour by
apparently taking over the defence of the emperor’s enemy while working covertly
to ensure that his own efforts fail. Tacitus is thoroughly persuaded of the integrity
of Lepidus. He remarks exceptionally on his ability to steer the senate away from
brutal sycophancy and savage adulation while remaining consistently influential
with Tiberius and even favoured by him.13 Contemporaries talked enviously of
what Lepidus said and did, what he was able to get away with.14 He was evidently
quite prepared to display independence of mind and willing to speak against the
emperor’s interests, at considerable risk to himself. So why did he not expend
greater efforts in presenting the case for the defence?
The most plausible explanation is that Lepidus felt there was simply no need for
effort and argument. In claiming that dicta are not things that people do and that
poetic dicta are vana, non-serious, he was appealing to principles that everybody
held and knew to be held. He may even have thought that there was a need not to
appear overly industrious, that a show of effort might undermine the basis of his
argument: confidence in the universal agreement that mention of its fundamental
principles must excite.
He would certainly have had good grounds for such confidence. The idea that
dicta differ from things that people do—and a fortiori cannot count as evils that
people do—was a principle commonly accepted from the earliest times in which
cases came to trial, according to Tacitus: ‘actions were prosecuted; words were not
punishable’.15 And the principle that poetic dicta are vana, non-serious—and a
fortiori not to be accounted crimes—had the backing of leading philosophers, Plato
among them, whom Tacitus calls ‘the foremost of the men of wisdom’.16 Plato was
explicit about this: poetic utterances are neither serious nor to be taken seriously.17
And Tacitus tells another story which gives us good reason to think that Lepidus
had firm grounds for his confidence. The historian Cremutius Cordus depended on
the universal acceptance of these two principles when he defended his Annals before
the senate four years after the Priscus case (AD 25). In relation to the idea that poetic
dicta are not serious, not to be treated as crimes, Cremutius cited the licence given

12Tacitus XIV.2. Tacitus reports the story as if it were undoubtedly true. 13 Tacitus IV.20.
14For evidence of his intelligence, independence, and ability, see Tacitus III.11; 27; 32; 35; 72;
VI.5; 27.
15 Tacitus I.72; facta arguabantur, dicta inpune errant. Tacitus states the rule and its longevity to

condemn Augustus for breaking it (in using the treason law as specious cover to initiate judicial
proceedings against the defamatory writings of Cassius Severus). Tacitus’ condemnation is precise: he
does not doubt that Cassius Severus’ compositions did indeed contain immoderate slander and scandal
of distinguished men and women.
16 Tacitus VI.6. 17 Republic, Book X, 602b7–8; paidian tina kai ou spoudēn.
 Introduction: What is Attunement? 5

to poets by Julius Caesar and Augustus. In relation to the idea that dicta differ from
things people do, he insisted: ‘It is my words that are on trial here, so innocent are
my actions.’18 Indeed, Cremutius appealed to the ancient practices of the Greeks
for the proper response to words that offend: ‘It is with words that one seeks redress
for words.’19 Better still, he thought, one should just put up with the offence: ‘for
what is ignored just fades away, whereas anger looks like recognition of the truth’.20
What is particularly striking, of course, is that Cremutius could happily appeal to
these principles before the senate, despite the precedent set by their treatment of
Priscus. This is strong testament to the underlying resilience of these principles, the
fact that they were generally held and known to be generally held. The Clutorius
Priscus case was evidently taken as an aberration. When Cremutius came to trial,
the senate sat on the fence. It did not condemn or execute Cremutius, but voted
that his books should be burned, once he had taken his own life. Moreover, having
given this order, the senate did not ensure that it was carried out. The books
survived, were preserved, and eventually re-published.21
Lepidus had reason to take his principles for granted. He presented them. There
was no more to be done, he could justly have said. The epilogue to the tale certainly
suggests that this was the way of it. Informed of the senate’s decision concerning
Priscus and his speedy execution, Tiberius claimed to be horrified, made an official
complaint, commended Lepidus for his defence of the poet, professed profound
disapproval that mere words had been punished in so precipitate and ultimate a
way.22 If Lepidus did fail to anticipate events—and there is no evidence that he was
entirely surprised by the senate’s spinelessness—he stuck to what everyone other-
wise took to be true. No doubt Tiberius’ intervention was part of a deliberate
strategy, always fascinating to Tacitus, to wrong-foot the senate, humiliating and
terrifying its members by turns.23 But it is the emperor’s tactics that are revealing,
regardless of what he himself believed. Tiberius knew he could count on general
support for the principles Lepidus had appealed to, their common acceptance, their
sheer apparent obviousness.
To the teller of the tale, Lepidus’ principles certainly seemed obvious. Tacitus
uses them as a benchmark against which to narrate Tiberius’ mental and moral
decline, interspersing his account with successive trials of poets so that the emperor’s
growing insanity keeps pace with his growing willingness to question and ultim-
ately reject the principles. (The theme achieves its full development in Tacitus’
description of Nero, where this same willingness turns in upon itself, acquiring a
suicidal edge: since this emperor is also a practising poet, the subject of insanity
here is also its object.) On the first occasion (Clutorius Priscus, AD 21), Tiberius
publicly denounces those who would treat poetic utterances as serious misdeeds or
crimes. On the second, when another knight is found guilty of writing poetry that

18 Tacitus IV.34; verba mea arguuntur: adeo factorum innocens sum.

19 Tacitus IV.35; dictis dicta ultus est. 20 Tacitus IV.34.
21 Tacitus IV.35. 22 Tacitus III.51; deprecaretur tam praecipitis verborum poenas.
23 A delicate theme, dependent on detailed and intricate reporting in the first triad of the Annals

(Books I–III), before the subtleties of this relationship are first compromised, under Sejanus, and then
disposed of, after Sejanus, in the second triad (Books IV–VI).
6 Introduction: What is Attunement?

insults the imperial dignity (Gaius Cominius, AD 24), senate and emperor are as one
that he should be spared.24 On the third occasion (Mamercus Scaurus, AD 34), the
emperor considers the poetic utterances in question as evidence of criminality, but
refuses to give this evidence weight beside other allegations.25 Clearly we are to
appreciate that Tiberius’ mental and moral powers are waning. On the fourth
occasion (Sextius Paconianus, AD 35), Tiberius treats the defendant’s poetic utter-
ances as serious misdeeds and has him executed for this offence alone. The
emperor’s powers have quite deserted him.26

III
Wise twentieth-century commentators regard Lepidus’ speech as a ‘powerful and
temperate discourse’.27 This is no surprise. We are steeped in a philosophical
tradition that encourages us to take such a view. J. L. Austin could count on this
tradition when he said as much:
And I might mention that, quite differently again, we could be issuing any of these
utterances, as we can issue an utterance of any kind whatsoever, in the course, for
example, of acting a play or making a joke or writing a poem—in which case of course
it would not be seriously meant and we shall not be able to say that we seriously
performed the act concerned.28
Austin repeated these claims on several occasions.29 Poetic utterances are non-
serious. They cannot be regarded as acts that are performed, things that people do.
If one were tempted to dismiss such remarks as the ravings of a lost philistine,
Tacitus’ tale would be a corrective.
Lepidus among the senators is very like Austin among analytic philosophers.30
Neither Lepidus nor Austin provide an argument for the claims that poetic dicta are
vana, that they are not things that people do. Both trust instead to the common
acceptability of these views, their sheer obviousness to their respective audiences.
Both believe they are arguing in the interests of poets (though they may

24 Tacitus IV.31. Tacitus calls this ‘the better course of action’; one wonders how Lepidus would

have received news of the decision.

25 Tacitus VI.29. 26 Tacitus VI.39.
27 Ronald Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy (1986, p. 131).
28 ‘Performative utterances’ in his (1979, pp. 233–52; pp. 240–1).
29 See (i) Austin pp. 9–10; 21–2; 92 fn. 2; 104; 122; (ii) ‘Performative utterances’ (Austin 1979,

pp. 233–52; pp. 240–1); (iii) ‘Performative-constative’ (Searle 1971, pp. 13–22; p. 15).
30 Adrian Moore is no doubt right that the label ‘analytic philosophy’ is ‘absurd’, no less than its

counterpart ‘continental philosophy’ (The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 2012, Preface). But we are
stuck with them, as Moore recognizes. Usage has changed over seventy years, masking sensitive issues
that it would be distracting to scratch away at here. Those who would now self-identify as ‘analytic
philosophers’ form a much larger and more disparate group than those to whom the name was first
applied. There is little alternative but to use ‘analytic philosophy’ equally broadly, to include the kinds
of philosophizing practised by those within this larger group. In this sense, for example, Austin and his
philosophizing count as ‘analytic’, even though he was deeply and explicitly critical of practices and
assumptions characteristic of others who also count as such.
 Introduction: What is Attunement? 7

simultaneously treat them with a certain disdain). Both assume that poets them-
selves would agree, if brought to the point. Both can subscribe to the reasons we
may find in Austin for this.31 For poets may, or even must, be allowed to exercise
certain freedoms in producing poetry. It is they themselves who insist on this. In
particular, we are not to regard them as committing themselves in producing poetic
utterances. So we should not regard those who produce such utterances as per-
forming any act, besides uttering itself. And we should not regard them as speaking
seriously, at least in the usual sense, that those who speak seriously thereby commit
themselves.32
There are differences, of course. Lepidus’ senatorial audience took fright and
seemed to reject the views he aired, whereas Austin’s analytic philosopher audience
has tended to share these views.33 But this difference is minor. The senators did
subscribe privately to Lepidus’ position, as we have seen. That is why Lepidus
himself felt no need to argue for it. The senators, out of timidity or cupidity, simply
acted contrary to their own beliefs on this occasion.
A second difference runs much deeper. Lepidus took the view that dicta in
general cannot be things that people do. His claim about the sub-class, poetic dicta,
just follows from this. Austin, on the other hand, claims that dicta in general are
things that people do. That is the corner-stone of the ‘speech act’ approach that he
strenuously promoted. Indeed, it is precisely by treating utterances in general as
things that people do that this approach sheds light on them.34 His claim about the
sub-class, poetic dicta, follows from his treatment of them as non-serious. Because
they are non-serious, they form a special case, an exception to the general rule. These
dicta are peculiar, not to be treated as things that people do.
So underlying the many similarities between Lepidus and Austin is this deeper
difference, prompting us to ask two questions. Why did Austin treat utterances in
poetry as non-serious? And why, in claiming this, could he count on the support of
his analytic philosopher audience?
Answering these questions is my task in the first half of this book. I shall argue
that Austin’s claim about poetry follows from considerations that place limitations
upon his own speech act proposals. Utterances are to be treated as doing things, but

31 Austin himself is not explicit about these reasons and what I offer here is an unusual

interpretation of his remarks on poetry. It is nevertheless the most reasonable reading, on the
evidence. Part I sets out to justify this, before exploring its many and positive implications.
32 Austin could appeal to a tradition here: it is in this sense, for example, that Samuel Johnson

introduces ‘serious’ into his biography of the poet Abraham Cowley (2009, pp. 5–53; pp. 7–8). For
discussion of the passage, see Chapter 7.
33 Some analytic philosophers present their own reasons, less facetiously than Austin: for example,

P. F. Strawson in ‘Intention and convention in speech acts’ (1971a, pp. 149–69; p. 149) and John
Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969, p. 57 and fn. 1). But most analytic
philosophers have been more complete in their accord with Austin, choosing simply to exclude poetic
utterance from their consideration without explaining why. The trend seems to have become
particularly marked from the 1970s onwards, an observation for which Anna Christina Ribeiro
has provided some interesting statistical support (see her ‘Toward a philosophy of poetry’, 2009,
pp. 61–77). Silent exclusion is more difficult to challenge, and hence more likely to go unchallenged,
than Austin’s explicit remarks. Doubly effective as a strategy, it is doubly questionable as a practice.
34 Austin, pp. 1–11 and passim.
8 Introduction: What is Attunement?

only if they are of a sort that make commitments, or at least occur in a context in
which commitment-apt utterances can be taken as making commitments. Poetic
utterances are not of that sort and do not occur in that context. Hence they are a
special case, not to be included in the general category of utterances to be elucidated
according to a speech act approach, analysed as things that people do. And it is only
in this specific sense that poetic utterances are ‘non-serious’.
So I shall claim that Austin takes one great step back from Lepidus. The gap that
then opens between them reveals the existence of further possible positions. Some
follow Lepidus and endorse both of his claims: (a) dicta are not things that people do;
(b) poetic dicta are vana, non-serious. But the real tussle is between those who accept
just one of his claims, where each thinks that their opponent has unhitched himself
from the wrong part of Lepidus’ position. This is what sets Austin against many of
his opponents among poets and literary critics. He denies (a) but asserts (b). They
deny (b) but assert (a). Still, Austin among analytic philosophers has a great deal in
common with many of his opponents among poets and literary critics. They each
agree with at least one of Lepidus’ claims. They each acknowledge that what
underlies Lepidus’ position is correct, indeed obviously so: that poetic utterances
are not to be taken as making commitments. Most importantly, they each deny that
poetic utterances can be things that people do. Austin and his opponents simply
disagree about this: whether poetry is ‘serious’ or not.
There is a fourth possibility, of course, though animosity and misunderstanding
keep it from being clearly visible: to unhitch ourselves from both parts of Lepidus’
position. That is my recommendation in the first half of this book. I shall argue that
the very considerations which lead anyone, like Austin, to reject (a) dicta are not
things that people do should lead one to reject (b) poetic dicta are vana, non-serious,
and that the very arguments which lead anyone (like Austin’s opponents) to reject
(b) should lead one to reject (a). In other words, we should accept Austin’s major
claim: in many cases, dicta are things that people do. But we should deny his
particular claim: in many cases, poetic dicta are serious. And this means that we can
lift his restriction: poetic dicta are equally to be regarded as things that people do,
and hence things that a philosophy of speech acts should attempt to grasp.
Lifting the restriction opens up the possibility of a philosophically attuned
critical approach to poetry, one that turns on action and is particularly alive to
the fact that uttering things in poetry can count as doing things. Exploring this
possibility is my task in the second half of this book. I shall focus on a particular
type of utterance, one that employs the first-person pronoun with a verb in
the present indicative active, where the verb names the act performed in uttering
it (the final sentence of the Preface is an example), calling it ‘Chaucer-type’ after one
of the first poets to make effective use of it in English poetry. I shall show how
speech act analyses of Chaucer-type utterances can deepen our awareness of their
presence and workings in poetry, and, conversely, how the study of particular
poems can give more adequate and discriminating form to our analysis of such
utterances.
In short, my claim in the second half of this book is that work on a theory of
speech acts prompted by Austin may be used to transform debate in philosophy
 Introduction: What is Attunement? 9

about the nature and value of poetry. A speech act approach enhances our
appreciation of poetry and appreciation of poetry enhances a speech act approach.
This will seem a surprising claim. It is natural to assume that Austin and those
philosophers he has influenced are averse to poetry, or at least unreceptive to it, and
hence that their work on speech acts must be incapable of contributing usefully to
philosophical debate on poetry.35 But this would be a mistake and my plan is to
show how and why we should avoid making it. We can, as Robert Southwell put it,
‘weave a new web in their own loom’.36

IV
This book aims at attuning poetry and philosophy. We should gain a clearer sense
of this goal before setting out to achieve it. What does ‘attunement’ mean? We
should also gain a clearer sense of the impediments in our way. For we are about to
enter contested territories where fellow travellers will be few and stretches of their
fellowship short. What difficulties do we face, and what strategies shall we adopt to
overcome them?
By attunement, I mean a mutually shaping approach in which we really do
philosophy in really appreciating poetry, doing the literary criticism necessary for
this. By ‘doing philosophy’, I mean analysing material in genuinely philosophical
ways, with the prospect of changing the way we think about things in general. By
‘really appreciating poetry’, I mean adopting a genuinely critical approach, with the
prospect of changing the way we respond to poems. And I mean ‘mutually shaping’
in a strong sense: attunement is a single, unified activity.37
We can take up different perspectives on attunement—and it may initially be
helpful to see how differently it then appears—but the activity itself remains one

35 Some may be hesitant for another reason: that it would be false or misleading to identify Austin

with speech act theory. Thus Nancy Bauer finds the ‘all-but-ubiquitous inheritance in analytic
philosophy of Austin as a mere “speech-act theorist” puzzling and depressing’ in How To Do Things
With Pornography (2015, Preface). Much of what motivates Bauer guides this project also: the need to
be receptive to the ethical character of Austin’s work, how it informs his philosophy of language—I
attempt to draw out of his remarks on poetry his underlying attentiveness to issues of responsibility and
commitment—and I agree that analytic philosophy tends to ignore this. But falling in with the
fashionable slighting of speech act theory—evident throughout Bauer’s interpretation and marked
here by the use of ‘mere’ and her distancing quotation marks—would distort the picture while
attempting to set it straight. To deny that Austin was interested in promoting a theory of speech
acts, in the face of his own practices and commentary, one would have to take an unwarrantedly narrow
and doctrinaire view of what a ‘theory’ of such acts must amount to, one that no actual speech act
theorist need either adopt or endorse.
36 ‘The author to his loving cosen’; preface to the sequence of poems from the ‘Waldegrave’

Manuscript (Stonyhurst MS A.v.27) and printed as the preface to Saint Peters Complaint, With other
Poemes; in Southwell (pp. 1–2; p. 1). See also Southwell (2007, pp. 1–2; p. 1).
37 Thus I do not use ‘attunement’ or ‘the attuning of poetry and philosophy’ to mean some end-

state, a fixed condition or state of affairs that we work to bring about. These phrases still name a goal,
but that goal is an activity. More precisely: to say we aim at attunement or the attuning of poetry and
philosophy is to say we seek to find, and then to practise, an approach that is mutually shaping in the
ways the text describes.
10 Introduction: What is Attunement?

and the same. Looked at from one direction, for example, the aim is to sharpen our
critical engagement with poems. Looked at from another direction, the aim is to
sharpen our sense of the philosophical issues which poetry raises. But attunement
assembles these perspectives and unifies these aims, finding ways of doing each in
doing the other—exercising our critical engagement with poems in engaging with
philosophy, and exercising our critical engagement with philosophy in engaging
with poems.
If this makes it seem that the normal disciplinary and classificatory boundaries
between philosophy and literary criticism reflect deeper differences between them,
then that is accurate enough. Very often, and not simply in seminar rooms, we are
struck by three things: the different kinds of question that philosophy and literary
criticism tend to ask, the different objects on which they tend to focus their
attention, and the different modes of attentiveness they tend to focus on those
objects. For example, a paradigmatic philosophical question in this area is ‘What is
literature?’, one that literary critics are content to say is not a literary question.38
Given such a question, the focus tends to be on the essence of literature, and the
mode of attentiveness frames itself around the need to identify a few very general
differences between what does and what does not count as such. Paradigmatic
literary critical questions, on the other hand, are those that enable us to get to grips
with the literary content of particular works. Given such questions, the focus tends
to be on collecting and then relating very many specific features of that work to each
other, and the mode of attentiveness frames itself around the need to persuade us of
the existence and relevance of those features to some reading or set of possible
readings. These divergences go some way to explaining why it is that philosophy
often changes the way we think about things in general but rarely affects the way we
respond to particular literary works, and why it is that the reverse is true of literary
criticism.
If there are such differences between philosophy and literary criticism, it may
seem problematic that attunement presents itself as a single, unified activity. But
attunement is like walking in this respect, also a single unified activity. Someone
able to walk would normally be able to move each of their two legs independently
of each other. But they would have to unify these movements to engage in what
would count, at least standardly, as walking. The movements of both legs contrib-
ute equally to this one exercise. In the same way, someone able to attune philoso-
phy and poetry would be able to appreciate poetry and to do philosophy
independently of each other. But they would have to unify these activities to engage
in what would count, here at least, as attunement. Appreciating poetry and doing
philosophy contribute equally to this one exercise. And the contribution is mutu-
ally shaping, just as are the movements of each leg in a normal walking motion,

38 Derek Attridge, ‘Derrida and the questioning of literature’, Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge

(London: Routledge, 1992) pp. 1–29; p. 1. Some philosophers would also deny that it is simply a
philosophical question; see Derrida, ‘Is there a philosophical language?’ in Points . . . Interviews
1974–1994, ed. Elizabeth Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995) pp. 216–27; p. 217.
I agree, for reasons that are our business here: it is a question that calls for the attunement of literary
criticism and philosophy.
 Introduction: What is Attunement? 11

with one constantly affecting and responding to the position and force of the other.
The way one appreciates poetry affects and responds to the way one philosophizes,
and vice versa. So attunement stands out by contrast with approaches which take a
pre-existing philosophical outlook and impose it on poetry, or which take a pre-
existing critical outlook and impose it on philosophy.39 Attunement is to these
affairs what walking is to hopping.
An attuned approach, in which each takes the other as an opportunity to
exercise itself, ought not to seem so alien to either poetry or philosophy. As a
starting point, and only that, it is clear enough that appreciating poetry as such
has intimately to do with what language is, what it does, and what it is for, just as
philosophy as such has intimately to do with these same questions. On the one
hand, these questions invoke a good deal of philosophy. On the other hand,
abstract ingenuity and formal resourcefulness alone are rarely enough to answer
them. Sensibility and receptivity to the varied uses of language are also called for,
capacities that are sustained and developed by appreciating poetry. Building on
this commonality, it ought to be possible to find mutually enhancing ways of
appreciating poetry and doing philosophy, rather than simply using one to
illustrate the other, or to ornament the other, or, worst of all, to pay the other
elaborate and ultimately vacuous compliments.
For example—and this is just one option, though an important one—
philosophy can recognize the ways in which poetry acts as a reflective study of
uses of language, singularly and uniquely equipped to provide its suitably directed
appreciators with philosophical insights into those uses. The opportunity to appre-
ciate philosophical distinctions and discriminations in poetry can improve our
ability to discriminate features of philosophical significance. And this opportunity
to grapple anew with philosophy in turn heightens our capacity to appreciate what
is rich and subtle in poetry, which returns us more richly provided to pursue
philosophy, from where we can go back more generously supplied to appreciate
poetry, and so on, back and forth. This vigorous spiralling—circling, but with
progress—is what I mean by attuning poetry and philosophy. It is a process that is
at once systematic and cumulative.
So we stand to gain much if we succeed. But we also stand to lose much if we fail.
It is not just that it would be rather nice if philosophy and poetry were to join
hands, nothing lost if they do not. Much poetry needs philosophy, principally
because philosophy sharpens an attentiveness that appreciation of poetry cannot
otherwise provide. Equally, philosophy needs this attentiveness to poetry, princi-
pally because poetry supplies evidential riches that philosophy cannot otherwise
secure, with its straightforward prose and unstructured, contextless examples.
These are brief, stratospheric, and necessarily inadequate ways to make these points,
lacking nuance and carefulness. Greater subtlety and precision should come as we

39 Toril Moi is rightly concerned about the first model, which is common in attempts to bring

philosophy and literature together: ‘The adventure of reading: literature and philosophy, Cavell and
Beauvoir’ (2011, pp. 125–40).
12 Introduction: What is Attunement?

proceed, and in the only way possible: by practising attunement in relation to

specific poems.
That we stand to lose much if we fail gives the search for attunement greater
urgency. The book’s title reflects this, recalling the lines from Tennyson:40
It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
The effect is as subtle as the falling-off it captures: the quiet of it, the discretion; the
w-beginning words spaced out one per line, their accompanying vowel-sounds
gradually elongating (within-will-widening) like a crocodile opening its jaws.41
Not that all kinds of philosophy are equally at fault. But merely to turn our backs
on those that are hostile to poetry is no resolution. And it mends nothing to attend
only to those kinds that already make a home for poetry. We need to resolve the
antipathy where philosophy treats poetry with contempt or tries in other ways to
exclude it. So the book will concentrate on the mode of philosophy most notorious
for its disdainful treatment of poetry: analytic philosophy, and particularly the
speech act approach within analytic philosophy of language, which notoriously
regards poetry—all poetry—as ‘non-serious’.
That is a quick way of making the point; too quick perhaps. Teased out, there are
at least three different reasons to concentrate on analytic philosophy (rather than
other kinds of philosophy) and on its relations with poetry (rather than other kinds
of literature).42
One is about what is fully satisfying. It is here that relations between literature
and philosophy are at their worst, now and for some considerable time in the past.
If we focus on other ways of philosophizing more conducive to poetry, or on other
kinds of literature more conducive to analytic philosophy, the likelihood is that we
will succeed only in offering superficial forms of exchange and bland gestures of
mutual respect. Meetings between the two will remain carefully controlled fringe
events of the sub-genres.43
A second reason is connected but distinct. It is not about opportunities lost but
about risks redoubled. Sound therapeutic practice requires that we confront

40 Tennyson, Idylls of the King: Merlin and Vivien, lines 388–90 (2007, p. 818).
41 Austin has a more comic-grotesque way with the elongations to which philosophy is prone: ‘But
now how, as philosophers, are we to proceed? One thing we might go on to do, of course, is to take it all
back: another would be to bog, by logical stages, down’; Austin p. 13. He did not always eschew such
elongations himself (which perhaps shows wisdom), but he tried to guide philosophers around the
bogs. There is, for example, his well-known admonition, ‘We must learn to run before we can walk’
(Austin p. 12), of some comfort to philosophers making attempts at literary criticism.
42 Besides the non-universal consideration that one starts from wherever one is, and I am an analytic

philosopher.
43 Not the least of the reasons why the predominantly Anglo-French conference at Royaumont in

March 1958 has achieved such lasting fame is that the participants felt able to speak fairly freely about
the antagonism underlying their conversations. R. P. van Brenda observed, for example, ‘Quand nous
nous voyons, nous sommes parfois trop polis, et très peu honnêtes’ (Cahiers de Royaumont, 1962,
p. 344).
 Introduction: What is Attunement? 13

bitterness and antipathy at the depths. If we do not, the underlying hurt will
remain, ready to burst up again in uglier, more violent forms.
The third reason to concentrate on relations between poetry and analytic
philosophy is quite unlike the other two. It has to do with confidence, and perhaps
audacity. The very same energies which account for the deepest animosities
between poetry and philosophy can be harnessed to make them mutually enriching.
So we should not turn aside from antipathy but use it to our advantage. To change
the metaphor, if we dig down to the roots of the animosities between poetry and
philosophy, we can train and nurture those same roots to bring forth mutual
flourishing instead. The downward digging takes up the first half of the book,
using reactions to Austin’s notorious remarks on poetry to uncover the roots of
antipathy. The upward flourishing is the subject of the second half, using Austinian
speech act analysis to show how poetry and philosophy require and benefit
each other.
All very well, one might think, but how is this supposed to work? Answering that
question is the main purpose of the book, but a basic sketch at the outset may
prove useful.
When analytic philosophers deny that poetry is or could be serious, they
overlook what is genuinely troubling about this attitude. And equally, when
poets and literary critics respond to this attitude, they exaggerate what is disturbing
about it, treating as professional aversion what is no worse than odious group levity,
and so reinforce a parallel disinclination to treat philosophy seriously. The stand-off
excuses and sustains a defective communicative environment in which much that is
philosophically significant in poetic utterance is ignored, and much in philosophy
that is relevant to the appreciation of poetry goes unrecognized. This, by turns,
deprives poetry of its full expressive capacity and philosophy of its full critical
potential.
The situation is the result of deeper misunderstandings, on both sides. What
philosophers intend in their remarks on poetry is generally better than is usually
assumed; what they offer, however, is usually much worse. What poets protect
about their vocation is relatively superficial; what they are prepared to concede,
however, is ruinous. Both effect this reverse, however unwittingly, when they agree
that poetry is incapable of performing certain sorts of action, and in particular of
making commitments. This is the error which forces acceptance of the defective
communicative environment, with all the subsequent misunderstanding that affords.
Critical analysis of poetry shows that poetry is indeed capable of these sorts of action,
and in particular of making commitments.
This is something poets realize in their work, whatever their reflections imply. It
is also something philosophy can readily endorse. Correcting the error and subse-
quent misunderstanding is liberating. Negatively, it releases poets and philosophers
from frustrations and constraints that are partly self-imposed. Positively, it enables
each to recognize the other’s capacity for integrity, on which (among much else)
their several claims to seriousness depend. For the truth is that analytic philosophy
can do better. It need not ignore poetry or reduce it to a samples-collection that it
can plunder for its own illustration. Equally, poetry can do better. It need not
14 Introduction: What is Attunement?

ignore analytic philosophy or reduce it to a crude assemblage of intellectual

materials that must be worked up into significant form. Poetry and analytic
philosophy can, and should, take each other seriously.
Even if we succeed in attuning poetry and philosophy, we cannot expect easy
relations. It will be a constant struggle to keep philosophy as philosophy while
enabling it to be receptive to poetry, to keep poetry as poetry while enabling it to be
receptive to philosophy. Institutional pressures do not help.44
But perhaps we should not even hope that relations would be easy. T. S. Eliot
once called philosophy an ‘unloved guest’ in the company of ‘real art or real
science’.45 No doubt he was aware that poetry is no better appreciated in the
company of philosophy (though it is cold comfort to find this attitude mutually
held). Eliot might be accused of hyperbole and interest, being on the point of
renouncing his own career as a philosopher. But there is a more interesting way to
respond. Eliot may have meant to disparage philosophy, but what he actually struck
on is a defining virtue. An unloved guest is suffered, after all, but still invited;
uncherished, but called on. And it is precisely by remaining an unloved guest that
philosophy stays honest. Poetry and its criticism too, perhaps. So the fact that it is a
constant struggle to bring philosophy and poetry together may be a good thing.
Many analytic philosophers will fear that association with poetry will only weaken
it. Many poets and critics will feel the same about association with philosophy. But
this perennial struggling is precisely what might allay such fears—if it acts as a
constant spur to maintain vivacity and sharpness, to prevent attunement from
degenerating into mere cosiness.
F. R. Leavis drew attention to these and associated dangers, putting the point in
his usual blunt way: to try to attune philosophy and poetry would be to ‘queer . . .
one discipline with the habits of another’.46 ‘Queering’ for him was not a good
thing. It signified a ‘blunting of edge, blurring of focus and muddled indiscretion of
attention’. It is easy to imagine how Leavis might have railed against the present
generation. On one side, philosophers whose fluid generalizations and triply
secured platitudes treat ‘the nature of poetry’ at so stratospheric a level as to be of
no earthly use in confronting a single averagely difficult poem. On the other side,

44 Particularly in Britain, where research is still assessed by panels established for the traditional

disciplines. Attempts to combine philosophy and literary criticism, like the present, for example, have
to choose whether to be judged as philosophy or literary criticism. And it is not difficult to see how a
competition run on these lines puts the combiner at a considerable disadvantage. They are not unlike a
hurdler, told, ‘The judges will assess you either on running or on high-jumping but not their artful
combination; so by all means set up your funny-looking obstacles along the track, but you must choose
who you want to compete against: sprinters who have no such hurdles, or high-jumpers who have only
one such leap to make.’ Until research assessment methods keep pace with the calls for interdisciplinary
research, academics will continue to be cautioned off such work.
45 Letter to Norbert Wiener, 6 January 1915 (Eliot 2009a, pp. 86–9; p. 88). The passage is dense

with humour and distancing, so one must be careful. The description of philosophy as an ‘unloved
guest’ presents what seems to be Eliot’s own view, but the idea that one must avoid it to ‘devote oneself
to either real art or real science’ he identifies as ‘the lesson of relativism’, with which he may just be
playing along for the benefit of the letter’s recipient. Wiener, after all, had just sent Eliot his own
recently published paper on relativism (Eliot 2009a, p. 86 note 3).
46 ‘Criticism and philosophy’ in Leavis (1952, pp. 211–22; p. 213).
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of One touch of
Terra
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: One touch of Terra

Author: Hannes Bok

Release date: November 19, 2023 [eBook #72173]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: King-Size Publications, Inc, 1956

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE TOUCH

OF TERRA ***
 one touch of terra

By HANNES BOK

Maybe they had been bad mannered—accepting things

of her—but who was to guess the Martian would interfere?

Hannes Bok, who has been part of the

world of Science Fiction and Fantasy
for so many years, tells the touching
story of Trixie and her dandelions, in
the little mining camp on Venus, and
how one of them th'ar Martians tried
to do her—and the citizens of
Finchburg—wrong.... Of course
Goreck was just giving Trixie the
runaround. All he was really after was
her dandelions ... as you would have
been....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Fantastic Universe December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Listen, Elmer!" Horseface Smith told his gwip. "What's that racket
ahead—yellin', shootin', or both?"
Elmer obediently stopped and cocked his duck-head in the direction
of Finchburg, then nodded sagely, if somewhat ambiguously. He was
a pack animal of the sort commonly used by psithium-prospectors on
Venus, now that interplanetary travel was commonplace, and he was
almost as intelligent as a human.
Despite his size—he was nearly as large as a terrestrial horse—he
must have had a dash of flying-squirrel blood, since when in a hurry
gwips were apt to bound off the ground, flattening their plump bodies
in a flying-squirrel glide which took them thirty to fifty feet per jump.
But at present Elmer wasn't able to do any bounding. His saddle-
bags were sagging with samples of ore, and he had all he could do
just to walk.
Horseface clunked his heels on Elmer's sides, urging him up the
stony hillside. They gained the summit and craned down at
Finchburg, only half a mile below. Like most of the mining-
settlements scattered sparsely over the vast Venus deserts, it
consisted of scarcely a dozen buildings, none of them new, but all in
reasonably good repair. If it is true that a town speaks for its
inhabitants, Finchburg plainly declared that while its people might be
down on their luck, but they hadn't lost hope.
"Looks like Trixie is blowing her jets," Horseface speculated, and
Elmer dipped his broad bill in agreement. "Wonder what's eating
her? She ain't acted human for months!"
Elmer cocked an inquiring eye on his master as if asking whether
Trixie's behavior could possibly be considered gwippish. He decided
not, and clucked sympathetically. He knew all about Trixie's
idiosyncrasies. But then, who—or what—didn't?
Trixie O'Neill was the only woman within a thousand miles of the
Venus Flats, and furthermore, the only terrestrial woman. She wasn't
young nor beautiful. She was in her middle fifties, gaunt, coarse, and
had a wooden leg.
She'd come to Finchburg thirty years ago at the height of the
psithium rush. She'd been young and pretty then, and desperately in
love with her prospector-spouse Mike O'Neill. Mike had been a
roistering giant, but he hadn't lasted long on Venus. The acid dust
had eaten his lungs away, and in less than a year he'd been laid to
rest down in an abandoned mine.
Almost immediately the veins of psithium had petered out. The mine-
owners closed the shafts and took away their expensive equipment
imported nut-by-bolt by rocket from Earth. Finchburg became a
ghost-town. All the miners except for die-hards like Horseface had
moved far away to the more promising strikes of Satterlee, Guzil
Banks and Storington.
But Trixie remained at Finchburg. "My Mike's buried here, ain't he?
Awright—where he stays, I stay!"
And she went on doggedly doing Mike's work until a cave-in crushed
one of her legs, after which she set up a hostelry which was a one-
woman service-bureau—she washed the miners' clothes, served
their meals, kept their books, sold supplies to them and most of all
kept up their morale. She provided the woman's touch, and the men
adored her.
But the touch which they worshiped abjectly was of Terra itself—half
of a blistered blast-tube filled with Terrestrial soil and growing
genuine Terrestrial dandelions, rather scrubby and colorless ones,
but from good old Terra just the same.
When you thought you'd choke on one more whiff of the bitter
Venus-dust, when you remembered the green lushness of Terra and
wished you were back there, knowing you could never find enough
psithium to pay your passage—then you went to Trixie's place,
looked at her dandelions and maybe touched your finger to the dirt in
which they grew—and you went away feeling better somehow. You'd
been home again for a little while.
And if anybody saw a tear in your eye, he looked the other way.
Because maybe tomorrow he'd be doing the same.
Why, there hadn't been a Mercurian in camp for years. They were
afraid to come here ever since the earthmen had run out of town that
one who'd got drunk on vhubi, upset the tube and tried to trample the
plants.
No man, you didn't treat Trixie or her dandelions lightly. They were
sacred.

"Hey," Horseface asked Elmer, "is that a rocket down there? A rocket
—in Finchburg?"
Elmer peered forward and said, "Wak, wak!" in a meshed-gears
voice, meaning yes.
"A rocket!" Horseface marvelled. "Maybe it's visitors from Terra! Or
maybe it's news of a new strike! Gee-jup, Elmer! Time's a-jettin'!"
They started down the hillside's hairpin turns. The shouting grew
more strident, and at times Horseface heard the raucous yowl of
blaster-guns.
Celebration!
"Yippity!" Horseface bellowed, firing his own gun in the air.
But it turned out to be anything but a celebration. Horseface rushed
Elmer into the community stable, unhooked the saddle-bags,
dropped the stall-bar, and ran toward Trixie's place, "The Pride of
Terra".
Every man in the camp was waiting at the door, and waiting
vociferously. The comments mingled into an indistinguishable
babble. A few miners were loitering around the rocket, a small two-
seater, like mice cagily inspecting a new and baffling trap. Horseface
recognized it by the device emblazoned on one of its doors—a
yellow sunburst on a grey square, the insignia of United Mars.
The rocket belonged to Thurd Goreck, the Martian. Goreck hadn't
been in town for years. He and his fellows had their diggings over at
Saturday Wells, "Saturday" for short, in the west. What, Horseface
wondered, possibly could have brought him here?
Since Horseface was a little below average height, he couldn't see
over the heads of the crowd. He raced up the steps of an old ruin
opposite Trixie's establishment. A shrieking beam from a blast-gun
fired at random just missed him and scorched the wood overhead.
He heard Trixie's bark: "Stop it, boys, do you hear me? Somebody's
likely to get hurt!"
She was standing in her doorway, a big sculpturesque woman with
her feet planted solidly wide and her red fists on her broad hips. Her
face was square and rough-hewn as a man's, the skin leathery from
years of weathering. She'd thrown her blue lace scarf around her
shoulders, the scarf that Mike O'Neill had given her on their first
anniversary. Her crystal earrings dangled under her cottony hair—a
bad sign. Trixie never put on her shawl and earrings unless thinking
of leaving town.
Thurd Goreck lounged against the door-frame beside her. Like most
Martians, he was tall and spindle-legged, large-chested, big-nosed
and equipped with almost elephantine ears. He displayed quite a
paternal solicitude whenever he looked at Trixie, but he sneered
openly at the yelping crowd.
"Don't do it, Trix!" somebody roared above the din.
"You'll be sorry!" another warned.
Still another wanted to know, "Have you forgotten Mike?"
Then Horseface noticed that the other Martians from Goreck's
settlement were ranged on either side of Trixie and Goreck, holding
off the Finchburgers. It was they who were doing most of the firing—
warning blasts over the crowd's heads.
"No," Trixie yelled, "I ain't forgotten Mike. He was a better man than
the lot of you put together!"
Horseface whistled to Candy Derain, who turned and edged toward
him. "What's up, Candy?"
"Man!" Candy reached at him. "You're just the one we need—Trixie's
running away! You got to do something quick!"
"She's—huh?"
"Goreck's been lazing around town almost ever since you went out
nugget hunting. He's taking Trixie to Saturday—going to set her up
there in a new place. He was smart and waited till you weren't
around, 'cause he knows you cut a lot of ice with Trix. You got to stop
her—"
A roar from the crowd cut him short. It sounded as if all the men
simultaneously had been jabbed with ice picks.
"Look!"
"No!"
"They're stealing our Terra!"
"Trixie, you can't do this to us—you can't!"
"Ain't you got no heart at all?"
Horseface goggled, and groaned. Trixie and Goreck had stepped
aside, making room for those Martians who were coming out with the
blast-tube and its dandelions.
"Howling Gizzlesteins!" Horseface moaned. Then determinedly, "One
side, Candy!"
He launched into the mob, shouldering, prodding and elbowing room
for himself until he was out in front. A Martian significantly poked a
blaster in his ribs.
"Trixie!" Horseface bawled, "what do you think you're doing?"
She scowled more fiercely than ever. "You!" she thundered, pointing
a muscular arm for emphasis. "You're a fine one, asking me that! I'm
clearing out of here, that's what. I'm sick and tired of all you useless
loafers preying on my good nature! Ain't it so, Goreck?"
The Martian nodded, grinning.
"For years and years," Trixie cried on, "you've been bleeding me dry!
Trixie will you do this for me? Trixie will you do that? And I been
doing it 'cause I felt sorry for you hopeless free-loaders, like as if
maybe you was my own Mike. But now I'm through with you—and
why? 'Cause you never treated me like no lady, that's why! You don't
deserve a woman's kindness, Goreck says, and he's right!"
The uproar was dying down, no doubt keeping the miners' spirits
company.
"Maybe I ain't no raving beauty," Trixie continued, "but that don't
mean I ain't no lady, see?" In her next remark she used questionable
words of interstellar origin—it is doubtful if they could have been said
to have enriched any language. "Why, you frownzley glorfels, you
even swear in front of me! So I'm clearing out. I've more than paid
my debt to Mike, Lord rest him."
As the groans began, she gestured airily. "Put the flowers in the
rocket, lads!"
"But Trixie!" Horseface called, pushing a step ahead. The Martian's
gun dug a trifle deeper into his side.
"Eassy doess it," the Martian admonished in his whistling accent.
Horseface cried, "We're your own people, Trixie! You can't ditch us
for Martians!"
"My people are the people treating me with respect!" she retorted,
and Horseface's long visage fell several inches longer.
Goreck's Martians slid the dandelion-container into the rocket's
baggage compartment and stood back, forming a lane down which
Goreck assisted Trixie with exaggerated politeness. Surely she
should have seen that his smirk was purely one of triumph!
But she didn't. She swung along on her wooden leg, thrilled to the
core, beaming coyly at Goreck and actually blushing. He handed her
into the rocket, let her arrange herself comfortably, then went to the
other side of the flyer and swung aboard.
He slammed the door shut and reached for the controls. He treated
the assemblage to one last sneer so poisonous that even a coral
snake would have flinched from it. Trixie leaned across him to thumb
her nose—after all, Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt had been dead
for a century.
The Martian with his gun in Horseface's midriff stepped back and
away. Horseface would have rushed after him, but Mouse Digby
caught him from behind.
"Hold it, Horseface!" And more softly, "We been up to something—"
Goreck pulled the rocket's power-lever with a grand flourish. Nothing
happened. He smiled sweetly at Trixie, shrugged and dragged on
the lever again. Nothing happened. On the third try he nearly
wrenched the stick from its socket. From one of the rocket's jets, as
though torn from its very heart, came two feeble sparks and a
mournful burp.
"We busted their feed-line!" Digby chuckled.

Goreck, having gone thus far, was not minded to stop now. He
sprang from the rocket, called something in Martian to his men, and
several of them raced away. The miners cheered perhaps a shade
precipitately and bore down on the rest. The gun-toting Martians
filled the air with frantic warning blasts and were swept down before
they could turn their weapons to more practical use. The miners
reeled around the rocket, swaying it as they clubbed the Martians
with their own guns.
Goreck backed them away with well-laced blasts near their toes—
what was known as "the quick hotfoot" since it turned the ground
molten. He maneuvered himself with his back to his ship, his men
breaking free and joining him.
Trixie clambered out seething with wrath. "You brakking chadouzes!"
she howled, brandishing a brawny fist. The men subsided sheepishly
silent. She was accustomed to having her way, and they were
accustomed to letting her have it. It had proved the best policy in the
long run.
"Look at you, brawling and trying to keep me from having the one
thing I want more than anything else—being treated lady-like! You
think I got any sympathy for you when you act like this? You can't
keep me here no longer, and you might as well realize it—and leave
me go!"
They muttered angrily, but there was nothing to do except surrender.
Horseface didn't bother to sheathe his gun—he threw it down in the
dust. Mouse Digby, who'd been so elated over the stalling of the
rocket, turned away and burst into tears.
The men were driven farther back as Trixie's supply-jeep snorted up
to the rocket, driven by those Martians to whom Goreck earlier had
shouted. They leaped down and assisted their fellow in transferring
the dandelions from the rocket to the jeep.
"Dissable my sship, will you?" Goreck asked, grinning foxily. "Well,
as we Martians say, there are plenty of ways to cook a gnorph!"
He snapped his fingers to one of his big-eared breed. "Phorey, you
drive the jeep over to Ssaturday." Trixie started toward the jeep and
he halted her—very courteously, of course. "No, my dear lady, we
will let the jeep go firsst. Then we can be certain that nobody
followss after it to rob you of your lovely flowerss. We will leave
later."
The jeep chugged away. Trixie was very red-faced and unable to
look at her erst-while Finchburg admirers. Perhaps, Horseface
hoped, she was relenting. But if she were, Goreck knew how to
prevent it.
"Ssuch clods, to sstare sso at a lady!" he purred, and Trixie glared
relentlessly at the men who had adored her so long—and apparently,
so vainly.
Since Goreck's rocket was damaged beyond immediate repair, he
rode off with Trixie on the town borer, a community-owned tractor
equipped with a giant blaster and used in boring mine-tunnels. It was
not intended for general travel and rumbled away very slowly, kicking
up a great deal of dust. The other Martians had come on gwips,
which they now mounted, then made off in a hurry.
"You'll get your borer back when I get my rocket back!" Goreck called
from the wake of dust.
The Finchburgers stayed as they were, every spine an S of
dejection.
"With Trixie gone," Candy Derain mourned, "there ain't no use our
staying here. We'll all starve!"
Baldy Dunn said, "Maybe we was bad-mannered accepting things off
of her, but I always meant to pay her back as soon as I found me
some psithium. If I'd of thought—"
Horseface said, "Of course Goreck is just giving Trixie the
runaround. All he's really after is her dandelions, 'cause he knows
what they mean to us. He'll keep 'em till we go to his diggings to
work for him, that's what! He'll charge us real money every time we
want to touch 'em—and where are we going to get money? It's like
he's holding 'em for ransom!"
He set his jaw. "Well, we ain't going to let him get away with it! When
Trixie finds out what a nopper he is, she'll be sorry, sure—but she
won't never come back here on account of she's too proud! She'll
just stay in Saturday being Goreck's slave, her poor heart
meanwhiles busting—and I ain't going to let her!"
He started briskly for the stable, the others hesitantly trailing along.
"I'm getting on Elmer and going after her. Dandelions be
desubricated, I'm going to save Trixie in spite of herself!"
But it seemed that everybody was having that identical idea at once.
Not all of them owned gwips, so the party of rescuers set off on a
peculiar assortment of vehicles—Candy on his vacuum-cup bicycle
meant for scaling precipices, Baldy Dunn and several others on pick-
wielding ore-cars, some on the psithium-detectors, and Digby on the
mowing-machine which cut and baled grasses for the feeding of the
gwips. About a third of the expedition had to go afoot.
In no time at all, Horseface and the other gwip-riders had far
outstripped the clumsy machines and the pedestrians. As Elmer
soared toward Saturday in forty-foot bounds, Horseface called to the
rider abreast of him:
"Wasn't that Martian driving Trixe's jeep Phorey Yakkermunn? Yeah?
Kind of thought so! Remembered him from way back when the rush
was on," he mumbled to himself. "Seemed a little crazy even then,
and guess he had to be, to go and turn against us what used to be
his buddies. Elmer, for the love of Pete, space your jumps—you're
beating the breath out of me!"
He came to a fork in the road and turned left, following the borer's
tracks. Then he halted, letting the other gwips overtake him. They
had started after Trixie too late. A swathe of sip-flowers had moved
in across the road.
"Might as well try to swim through space to Terra!" Horseface
lamented. "Blast them zips!"

But it wouldn't have done him much good if he had blasted them.
The zips were pretty things, something like Terrestrial tiger-lilies—
brilliant orange cups on tall green stems. They grew very thickly and
had been named because of their incredibly swift life-cycle. In five
seconds they would zip up from the ground as sprouts, attain full
green growth, blossom, produce seed, fall withering and scatter the
seed which in another five seconds would do the same thing over
again.
Nobody possibly could wedge through their rank masses. If anyone
tried, and were somehow to reach their midst, he would find himself
being tossed up and down at five-second intervals as though being
hazed on a blanket.
The zips traveled whichever way the wind carried their seeds—which
happened right now to be away from Saturday. If the salt plains and
chains of vertical peaks had not checked them, they might have
choked the whole of Venus centuries ago.
Horseface blinked at them, dismayed. The other men also blinked,
since the continual change from bare earth to green stems to orange
blooms and back to bare earth again took place in five snaps of the
fingers, like the winking of an illuminated sign.
Elmer helpfully tried to eat them, but they vanished in decay even as
his beak closed over them. And they stretched for miles and miles.
"Awrk!" He spat them out and shrugged discouragedly, almost
hurling Horseface off the saddle.
"Guess we got to detour," Horseface sighed. They skirted the
encroaching zips and ran smack into a sheerly perpendicular cliff.
While they were wondering what to do next, Candy purred up on his
vacuum-cup bicycle.
"At least I can ride up and over," he said, switching gear. He shot up
the cliff and out of sight, the suction-cups popping like a string of fire-
crackers.
"You fool, come back here!" Horseface bawled, but Candy was out of
earshot by then. "He's forgot there's nothing but rock-spires for miles
and miles on the other side. He'll ride up and down for hours and get
no farther forward than a hundred yards!"
He thumped his heels on Elmer's sides. "Gee-jup, Elmer—we'll have
to try the other end of the zips."
Digby hailed him from the mower. "Should I try cutting a path through
'em?"
"How can you, when they die before your blade turns, and grow up
before it can turn again? They'll bounce you to butter and shake the
mower to bits."
"But we got to do something!"
By now the men on the detectors and ore-cars had caught up with
the gwips, and the men on foot were within hailing distance.
"We're licked," Horseface mourned. "Ain't nothing we can do, except
try the other end of the zips—and that's miles away. We're finished."
But they weren't. Elmer sneezed, exclaimed, "Yuk, yuk!" and jabbed
his bill to indicate the cliffs.
Horseface sniffed. "Smells like rock-dust. If I didn't know better, I'd
say somebody's been boring through the rock—hey! Trix and Goreck
were riding on the borer! The zips must have cut them off the road
like us! Come on, boys, look for the hole they made—boring a tunnel
to cut past the zips!"
He didn't need to nudge Elmer. The gwip leaped toward the rocks,
found the hole and slowed to a crouching walk into it. The passage
was eight feet in diameter and reeking of blasted rock. After about a
hundred yards it emerged into daylight but encountered zips en
masse and so returned inward for several hundred yards more.
"That means Goreck wasted a lot of time tunneling," Horseface said
happily. "Maybe we ain't so terrible far behind after all."
There was a shriek from the rear, and he reined Elmer. "What's
that?"
"Dunno," the next man said, turning to look back.
They waited. One of the pedestrians came sprinting. "Hey, the
detectors found a whopping vein of psithium—bigger than the one
that started the old-time rush!"
"Huh, is that all?" Horseface demanded. "Forget it! We got to save
Trixie!"

The borer had traveled faster than Horseface had imagined. He

didn't come in sight of it until the party reached Saturday. It was just
stopping in front of Goreck's tavern, "The Martian's Fancy". Goreck
was handing Trixie down from it.
Saturday was a lot less of a ghost-town than Finchburg. Maybe there
were weeds in its main street, but every house had its occupants,
and some had coats of paint besides.
Elmer braked at the borer, his claws deeply furrowing the dust.
Horseface called, "Trix, come on back! We come to save you in spite
of yourself!"
Goreck whistled, and a flock of his boys materialised on the porch of
"The Martian's Fancy".
"Trouble, boyss! Sstand ready!"
Then he smiled at Horseface and the other Finchburgers. It was a
masterpiece of insult. "I don't like blast-play or dangerouss fighting,
but if necessary, I'll resort to it. You've no authority to argue, sso go
before you get hurt. Trixie iss here because she wants to be here—
no, my dear?"
He nudged her. She jumped, looked as though she was about to bat
him one, then gulped and nodded. She couldn't look in the eyes of
Horseface and his party.
Horseface laid his hand on his blaster-butt. "It don't make no particle
of difference. Maybe you fooled Trix, but you ain't fooled us, so hand
her over, see?"
Goreck twinkled jovially at his men in front of "The Martian's Fancy".
He said, "Horseface, I warn you—get back, and take your hand off
your gun. As long as I have the dandelionss ssafe inside my
headquarterss, I'm quite ssure that you won't dare try anything
reckless—"
"Boss! Psst!" One of the Martians was beckoning nervously.
"What is it?" Goreck demanded testily. "Sspeak up! There'ss nothing
to fear—we've got the whip hand."
"But, boss—"
Goreck dropped his own hand to his own gun. The Martian hastily
piped, "The dandelionss! They didn't get here!"
"I—what—ulp!" Goreck spluttered, which made beautiful sense even
if it wasn't coherent. He dived behind Trixie as though behind a rock,
and whipped out his gun.
"Looking klambits!" Mouse Digby moaned. "The zips! They got
Phorey and the jeep and the dandelions! Shook 'em to pieces!"
He pressed his mouth into a slit and started grimly forward. But
Trixie's scream checked him.
"My dandelions! Gone! All gone! Just 'cause I wanted to be treated
nice—"
Horseface said, "You see? That's what you get for being so foolish.
And ain't us coming to fetch you kind of a compliment? It's sure took
us a lot more effort than Goreck's sweet-talking did. You, Goreck, get
out from behind a woman's skirts! That ain't no way for a gentleman
to act!"
"Trixie, back up to the Fancy," Goreck snapped. "Hide me. Boyss,"
he squeaked, gesturing wildly, "let 'em have it!"
"No you don't! You ain't going to shoot my old pardners!" Trixie
fumed, even as a number of rays from Martian blasters sang past.
The Finchburgers ducked, not daring to shoot while Trixie was so
near their targets.
She turned, swooped and had Goreck off the ground, high over her
head and squawking. He didn't dare shoot her since she was his
only hope of salvation, and the Martians didn't either.
They just stopped fighting.
Trixie walked Goreck over to Horseface and thumped him down on
the dust. The rest of the Martians held a quick exchange of ideas
limited strictly to gestures, and began to melt away from the scene.
"Fortune hunter! Deceiver!" Trixie bawled at Goreck who was already
wretched enough with blasters poked in his face. "You promised me
you'd do it all peaceful, and still you wanted to shoot my pardners!