May 19, 2006
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The Great Bartenderby Peter Viereck (1948)
Being absurd as well as beautiful,
Magic– like art– is hoax redeemed by awe.
(Not priest but clown,
the shuddering sorcerer
Is more astounded than
his rapt applauders:
“Then all those props and Easters
of my stage
Came true? But I was joking all the time!”)
Art, being bartender, is never drunk;
And magic that believes itself, must die.
My star was rocket of my unbelief,
Launched heavenward as
all doubt’s longings are;
It burst when, drunk with self-belief,
I tried to be its priest and shouted upward:
“Answers at last! If you’ll but hint
the answers
For which earth aches, that famous
Whence and Whither;
Assuage our howling Why? with final fact.”– As quoted in The Practical Cogitator,
or The Thinker’s Anthology,
Selected and Edited by
Charles P. Curtis, Jr., and
Ferris Greenslet,
Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged,
With a new Introduction by
John H. Finley, Jr.,
Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston, 1962The dates of Viereck’s birth and death are according to this morning’s New York Times.
Related material:Five Log24 entries
ending May 13,
the date of Viereck’s death.
