Page 122 - BraveNewWorld

122 IDPH

“What do you think of them?” he asked when he had done.
The Savage shook his head. “Listen to this,” was his answer; and unlocking the
drawer in which he kept his mouse-eaten book, he opened and read:
“Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree,

Herald sad and trumpet be .”
Helmholtz listened with a growing excitement. At “sole Arabian tree” he star-
ted; at “thou shrieking harbinger” he smiled with sudden pleasure; at “every
fowl of tyrant wing” the blood rushed up into his cheeks; but at “defunctive
music” he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedented emotion. The Sa-
vage read on:
“Property was thus appall’d,
That the self was not the same;

Single nature’s double name
Neither two nor one was call’d
Reason in itself confounded

Saw division grow together .”
“Orgy-porgy!” said Bernard, interrupting the reading with a loud, unpleasant
laugh. “It’s just a Solidarity Service hymn.” He was revenging himself on his
two friends for liking one another more than they liked him.
In the course of their next two or three meetings he frequently repeated this
little act of vengeance. It was simple and, since both Helmholtz and the Savage
were dreadfully pained by the shattering and defilement of a favourite poetic
crystal, extremely effective. In the end, Helmholtz threatened to kick him out
of the room if he dared to interrupt again. And yet, strangely enough, the next
interruption, the most disgraceful of all, came from Helmholtz himself.
The Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet aloud-reading (for all the time he
was seeing himself as Romeo and Lenina as Juliet) with an intense and quive-
ring passion. Helmholtz had listened to the scene of the lovers’ first meeting
with a puzzled interest. The scene in the orchard had delighted him with its
poetry; but the sentiments expressed had made him smile. Getting into such a
state about having a girl-it seemed rather ridiculous. But, taken detail by verbal
detail, what a superb piece of emotional engineering! “That old fellow,” he said,
“he makes our best propaganda technicians look absolutely silly.” The Savage
smiled triumphantly and resumed his reading. All went tolerably well until, in
the last scene of the third act, Capulet and Lady Capulet began to bully Juliet

http://www.idph.net